Overnight Pizza and the Consistent Unreliability of Expert Guidelines(residentcontrarian.substack.com)
residentcontrarian.substack.com
Overnight Pizza and the Consistent Unreliability of Expert Guidelines
https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/overnight-pizza-and-the-consistent
98 comments
Executive summary: it is safe to eat pizza left unrefrigerated for 12 hours.
Lovely article, plain sense made entertaining. However, the entire argument arises from an error in living conditions: these people lack hounds.
A proper lifestyle shared with loyal hounds ensures that silly sanitation issues such as these never even arise. "5 second rule?" hah! food don't bounce twice, even if the hound was outside when it was dropped.
A proper lifestyle shared with loyal hounds ensures that silly sanitation issues such as these never even arise. "5 second rule?" hah! food don't bounce twice, even if the hound was outside when it was dropped.
I'm having to teach the rescue collie what "oops" means, and that it's ok to eat things that I point out on the floor.
I've cared for many dogs in my time, and this is unprecedented.
I've cared for many dogs in my time, and this is unprecedented.
"Leave it" is a very useful command and I'm glad our dog knows it. I don't know why our local park has multiple bread rolls strewn around every few days, or why I dropped an entire container of salt on the floor yesterday, but it helps in both cases.
He will by default leave anything he sees that we drop, but out of sight all bets are off.
He will by default leave anything he sees that we drop, but out of sight all bets are off.
In truth we too have a command: shout "Crumbs!" and they come hoover up anything nearby, including things we didn't notice.
Those who say "dont share food," do have a point; it's also important to teach the hounds civility about sharing food. It's important to teach the hounds civility about everything tho so I think some make too big a deal of food.
When we cook dinner we're surrounded by an adoring, attentive audience, eager to assist and suggest the addition of more curry sauce.
Those who say "dont share food," do have a point; it's also important to teach the hounds civility about sharing food. It's important to teach the hounds civility about everything tho so I think some make too big a deal of food.
When we cook dinner we're surrounded by an adoring, attentive audience, eager to assist and suggest the addition of more curry sauce.
ha, my rescue dog was quite reticent about many common and natural dog behaviors like that, which led me to conclude she was over-disciplined (or perhaps worse) by her previous owners.
nearly 3 years on, she still hesitates eating what i explicitly give her for meals in bowls, even with much fanfare and encouragement, but easily welcomes treats given by hand. she won’t eat anything on the ground indoors without permission. it’s so uncharacteristic of dogs in general.
she knows by now not to eat random things off the ground on our walks, but sometimes she’ll sheepishly sneak a munch anyways when i’m not paying attention. she was found wandering the streets so maybe that explains some of this behavior.
nearly 3 years on, she still hesitates eating what i explicitly give her for meals in bowls, even with much fanfare and encouragement, but easily welcomes treats given by hand. she won’t eat anything on the ground indoors without permission. it’s so uncharacteristic of dogs in general.
she knows by now not to eat random things off the ground on our walks, but sometimes she’ll sheepishly sneak a munch anyways when i’m not paying attention. she was found wandering the streets so maybe that explains some of this behavior.
Yeah, ours was found straying, no collar, no chip, nothing known about her before that.
She's been trained, (like, she walks on the left, just behind the last person in the group, with a slack lead or no lead at all) and she was afraid of _everything_ to start with. Throwing anything, fast movements, anything that looked like hitting would send her scuttling with a tucked tail.
She's been trained, (like, she walks on the left, just behind the last person in the group, with a slack lead or no lead at all) and she was afraid of _everything_ to start with. Throwing anything, fast movements, anything that looked like hitting would send her scuttling with a tucked tail.
oh wow, that sounds eerily familiar! mine spent the first 2+ months having anxiety diarrhea at 3 in the morning, worried that i would hit her for breaking some impossible to discern and arbitrary human rule.
i actually detrained my dog from walking on the left behind me because it otherwise reinforced anxiety, low self-esteem, and a strict dominance relationship, which just made me sad (and her too, i'm sure). i now let her walk freely to engender self-confidence as well as a measure of independence. she's still very obedient so will take direction quite willingly (sometimes getting anxious even now when she can't figure out what i want, though much less frequently).
i actually detrained my dog from walking on the left behind me because it otherwise reinforced anxiety, low self-esteem, and a strict dominance relationship, which just made me sad (and her too, i'm sure). i now let her walk freely to engender self-confidence as well as a measure of independence. she's still very obedient so will take direction quite willingly (sometimes getting anxious even now when she can't figure out what i want, though much less frequently).
Cats also.
An old friend of mine has a saying: "If you know why you're not supposed to stick a fork into a toaster to get a piece of stuck toast out, you're allowed to stick a fork into a toaster to get a piece of stuck toast out."
On the other hand, wooden chopsticks are safer and work better. Similarly, I like my pizza slightly soggy after being bagged and refrigerated, though I don't always bother.
Or you can just unplug the toaster.
That doesn't protect from accidentally bending or damaging the heating elements, which can lead to shorts or malfunctions, which is much easier to do digging around with a pointy piece of metal than a blunt stick. Always frustrating when you realize why it has a hot spot, and that knowing your tools better should have led you to anticipate that failure.
LOTO!
Secure that energy then do what needs done.
Secure that energy then do what needs done.
I have unironically LOTO'd power boxes in laundry rooms before.
I'm not sure which category I fall in...
Is the reason that the outlet might be reverse polarity, and if that's on your mind you've probably checked that it's safe?
Is the reason that the outlet might be reverse polarity, and if that's on your mind you've probably checked that it's safe?
>I'm not sure which category I fall in
If you aren't sure, he would say you're not allowed to stick a fork in toasters.
If you aren't sure, he would say you're not allowed to stick a fork in toasters.
Duly noted!
The reason is that old toaster designs had unpolarized plugs and therefore a good chance of uninsulated live wires inside, even when off. Modern toasters don't anymore, but folk wisdom lasts forever. Although you make a good point that if your outlet polarity is reversed, you might still have a problem. I don't know if modern designs are robust to that...
I learned this from a video about old Sunbeam toasters that was unexpectedly fascinating: https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y
I learned this from a video about old Sunbeam toasters that was unexpectedly fascinating: https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y
Wow! That's amazing! Thank you for sharing that video.
Now I want a toaster like that.
Now I want a toaster like that.
"Universal law is for lackeys. Context is for kings."
"Make the rules,
then break them all 'cause you are the best" -- Prince, Cream
That's a good (and pithy!) take, although it does seem like a bit of a Dunning-Kreuger tarpit. There's a lot of implicit context packed into that "why", depending on the subject.
When i first started working in a lab, my boss told me i had to do safety training first, and then gave me a pile of documents explaining in detail how all the lab's methods worked. There was nothing in them about safety. But, he explained, if i understood all the materials and equipment i was going to use in miniscule detail, then i would naturally know how to use them safely.
Though the article reasonably paints the "conservative" (in the small-c/non-political usage) position as driven by "science" or at least fear of being "anti-science", there is in fact nothing scientific about it. It's just a plain appeal to authority.
In fact the "hick" position is the scientific one. If someone eats unrefrigerated pizza ten times without any Adverse Events, then in fact that's an experiment providing (admittedly crude) scientific data that, in fact, the chance of an Adverse Event is no worse than ~10%. (Pedant note: quick, dirty, wrong calculation because the exact value doesn't matter here.)
Science, the process, really does work. Even if many of those who practice it don't look like TV or press release scientists. And even if many "Real Scientists" aren't really anything of the sort.
In fact the "hick" position is the scientific one. If someone eats unrefrigerated pizza ten times without any Adverse Events, then in fact that's an experiment providing (admittedly crude) scientific data that, in fact, the chance of an Adverse Event is no worse than ~10%. (Pedant note: quick, dirty, wrong calculation because the exact value doesn't matter here.)
Science, the process, really does work. Even if many of those who practice it don't look like TV or press release scientists. And even if many "Real Scientists" aren't really anything of the sort.
adam savage, who many probably now grew up with on television, has always emphasized the point that "the difference between science and fucking around, is writing shit down."
it lowers the barrier of entry to science. anyone can do science. it should be easy and accessible. don't let good be the enemy of perfect. not everything has to be done by academics in lab coats—anyone can participate. I think it's important to keep the scientific process open and understandable to everyone.
it lowers the barrier of entry to science. anyone can do science. it should be easy and accessible. don't let good be the enemy of perfect. not everything has to be done by academics in lab coats—anyone can participate. I think it's important to keep the scientific process open and understandable to everyone.
It was Alex Jason not Adam Savage, and it wasn't such crude language.
https://www.tested.com/making/557288-origin-only-difference-...
https://www.tested.com/making/557288-origin-only-difference-...
(Note i still think the author is right) -- If eating that pizza kills one in 100,000 though, you'd have no idea. But the USDA saying "Go ahead, eat the pizza!" would kill dozens of people a year.
Advice to huge numbers of people skews the odds of "this is probably fine", which I think is the root of this. Aside from the fact that quantifying just how many zeros are in front of that probability hasn't (can't?) be done. It probably _is_ reasonable to estimate based on prior science that if 300,000,000 people leave pizza out a few times a year, there's a one in a billion chance of warm cheese making someone super sick.
I also wonder how much lawsuit culture plays a part in this, it only takes one bad luck case.
Advice to huge numbers of people skews the odds of "this is probably fine", which I think is the root of this. Aside from the fact that quantifying just how many zeros are in front of that probability hasn't (can't?) be done. It probably _is_ reasonable to estimate based on prior science that if 300,000,000 people leave pizza out a few times a year, there's a one in a billion chance of warm cheese making someone super sick.
I also wonder how much lawsuit culture plays a part in this, it only takes one bad luck case.
If eating that pizza kills 1 in 100,000 we would absolutely have an idea. Apparently about 3 Billion people buy pizza year in the US alone. Probably 1 Billion of those pizzas, at least, are then eaten cold overnight. But we don't have 10,000 people or more dying of cold pizza a year.
> Apparently about 3 Billion people buy pizza year in the US alone. Probably 1 Billion of those pizzas, at least, are then eaten cold overnight.
If by “cold overnight” you mean unrefrigerated, I doubt that anything like 1/3 are.
If by “cold overnight” you mean unrefrigerated, I doubt that anything like 1/3 are.
"Lawsuit culture" is mostly a myth created by wealthy corporate defendants who don't like being held accountable for their negligence, and partly due to the lack of socialized healthcare in the US.
I had a friend try to sue a company. It turns out it has sizable out of pocket costs, the lawyer fees are steep, and you aren’t compensated for the time you have to spend on the case, even if you win. But the worst part is, most issues you can sue over, the most you can recoup is what you can prove as damages. So if a company literally steals $500 from you, that is all you can recoup after dealing with all of the hassles of the lawsuit, chance of losing and being out thousands of dollars in costs, the time (years usually), etc. And if you settle, those proceeds are also income taxed.
If anything, there should be more lawsuits against companies and they should be punished punitively.
If anything, there should be more lawsuits against companies and they should be punished punitively.
It seems more reasonable to me, and with a roughly equal amount of evidence, that lawsuit culture was created by a mixture of media sensationalizing a couple of lawsuits and lawyers capitalizing on the fear.
here's the thing too though... even if it doesn't kill you there are many food borne illnesses that don't show their effects until many days later some even over a month later so the pizza borne illness wouldn't be tracked back to that. it's almost impossible to track those back to their sources unless you have an outbreak of it. now a quick acting food borne illness would have a more quick cause and effect that would aid in diagnosis.
https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/what-you-need-know-about-...
https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/what-you-need-know-about-...
> If eating that pizza kills one in 100,000 though, you'd have no idea.
I'm going to guess this is wrong. I went to a large private university of around thirty thousand. I'd estimate, on any given week, the average student has eaten leftover pizza in the morning once. This alone puts us at a hundred and twenty thousand overnight pizzas consumed per month. Millions per year. At just one university! Surely we'd hear cautionary tales of overnight pizza at 1 in 100k or even 1 in a million, as deaths from it would be far more common than binge drinking.
My estimates may be off a bit, but probably not by as much as you'd think. Student organizations buy copious amounts of pizza because it's popular and cheap.
I'm going to guess this is wrong. I went to a large private university of around thirty thousand. I'd estimate, on any given week, the average student has eaten leftover pizza in the morning once. This alone puts us at a hundred and twenty thousand overnight pizzas consumed per month. Millions per year. At just one university! Surely we'd hear cautionary tales of overnight pizza at 1 in 100k or even 1 in a million, as deaths from it would be far more common than binge drinking.
My estimates may be off a bit, but probably not by as much as you'd think. Student organizations buy copious amounts of pizza because it's popular and cheap.
To offer a counterpoint, college students aren't exactly a randomly distributed sample. They're young adults who are (on average) in the prime of their lives from an immune response perspective, and self-select for a certain minimum level of health besides that. One would expect their responses to food-borne illness vectors to skew dramatically to the less severe side than the general population.
I'm fascinated by the assumption by many in this thread that eating pizza left out overnight is common. I've never done it, and I went to college. We had refrigerators. I mean, if you have a refrigerator why not put the pizza in there?
Same reason I often leave pizza out even though I'm years removed from college. Pizza box big, refrigerator small.
I agree. If nothing else, a community of the young and hungry might mean that there never is any leftover pizza.
It's cheese and cured meat and bread. If its covered I'm not too worried about it.
I think your estimates are way, way off. I doubt the average college student eats leftover pizza once a week, let alone pizza that's been left out all night.
This, along with "belief" in supposed scientific facts, drives me insane.
The best is when someone tells you that 100 scientists agree on it, so it must be true, but it turns out that a few claimed it and a bunch of other scientists back them up without actually doing any science.
Don't even get me started on all the fraud we've been seeing lately in scientific journals.
I no longer really fault people that don't believe what a scientist tells them. The ones that make the news are the least trustworthy and usually have some bias towards what they're saying.
If I didn't understand science as well as I do, I'd be tempted to join them in disbelief.
The best is when someone tells you that 100 scientists agree on it, so it must be true, but it turns out that a few claimed it and a bunch of other scientists back them up without actually doing any science.
Don't even get me started on all the fraud we've been seeing lately in scientific journals.
I no longer really fault people that don't believe what a scientist tells them. The ones that make the news are the least trustworthy and usually have some bias towards what they're saying.
If I didn't understand science as well as I do, I'd be tempted to join them in disbelief.
>The best is when someone tells you that 100 scientists agree on it, so it must be true, but it turns out that a few claimed it and a bunch of other scientists back them up without actually doing any science.
Im not looking to get into an argument, so I'm going to be short. These 100 scientists' opinions are based on a lot of collective years practicing as a scientist and everything that it entails, so them agreeing with a scientific fact has a _lot_ more weight behind it than >people that don't believe what a scientist tells them.
Im not looking to get into an argument, so I'm going to be short. These 100 scientists' opinions are based on a lot of collective years practicing as a scientist and everything that it entails, so them agreeing with a scientific fact has a _lot_ more weight behind it than >people that don't believe what a scientist tells them.
What's weight?
>In fact the "hick" position is the scientific one.
It is not. It is evidence-based, and experiment-based, but this is not enough for it to be scientific. For that, it also needs to fit with previous experimental data, and not contradict an existing scientific model (expanding on it and replacing it with a more general model is fine).
You can say the experts in this case are being overly cautious, but there's no denying that
>If a perishable food (such as meat or poultry) has been left out at room temperature overnight (more than two hours) it may not be safe.
This is a fact, as established by scientific studies. The problem is the danger 'threshold' that leads one to behave in accordance with the drawn conclusion:
>Discard it, even though it may look and smell good. Never taste a food to see if it is spoiled. Use a food thermometer to verify temperatures. Never leave food in the Danger Zone over two hours; one hour if outside temperature is above 90 °F.
It is not. It is evidence-based, and experiment-based, but this is not enough for it to be scientific. For that, it also needs to fit with previous experimental data, and not contradict an existing scientific model (expanding on it and replacing it with a more general model is fine).
You can say the experts in this case are being overly cautious, but there's no denying that
>If a perishable food (such as meat or poultry) has been left out at room temperature overnight (more than two hours) it may not be safe.
This is a fact, as established by scientific studies. The problem is the danger 'threshold' that leads one to behave in accordance with the drawn conclusion:
>Discard it, even though it may look and smell good. Never taste a food to see if it is spoiled. Use a food thermometer to verify temperatures. Never leave food in the Danger Zone over two hours; one hour if outside temperature is above 90 °F.
> This is a fact, as established by scientific studies.
It's also an incredibly weak claim. It makes an extremely qualified statement about a very broad set of things.
You could just as easily say "any object left on the kitchen counter overnight may poison you" and that would be true even if the incidence of poisoning by recipe card in kitchens is approximately zero. Let alone the meat products that literally exist to be stored in the open.
Something loosely deriving from scientific studies is no more 'science' just for that fact than something deriving from uncontrolled empirical evidence is. In this case the statement is so obvious as to be kind of useless for prediction.
It's also an incredibly weak claim. It makes an extremely qualified statement about a very broad set of things.
You could just as easily say "any object left on the kitchen counter overnight may poison you" and that would be true even if the incidence of poisoning by recipe card in kitchens is approximately zero. Let alone the meat products that literally exist to be stored in the open.
Something loosely deriving from scientific studies is no more 'science' just for that fact than something deriving from uncontrolled empirical evidence is. In this case the statement is so obvious as to be kind of useless for prediction.
Exactly how precise do you want the CDC guidelines to be?
What people don't realize is that the USDA and FDA operate on guidelines such that the most basic cook can follow them. J Kenji Lopez-Alt points this out in his book Food Lab. There are graphs that show that there are safe temperatures for foods below the often quoted temperatures. 165 for chicken is quoted as the minimum safe temperature, but that's actually the instant temperature. Holding chicken at 155 is safe as long as it's done for the recommended amount of time.
The USDA just wants to prevent wide-spread food borne illnesses that are easily preventable. Hence why the small scale experiments where someone eats chicken only cooked to 155 turn out successful all the time.
Note that this isn't to discredit what you're saying. I just wanted to point out that there's more to the guidelines than the parroted parts.
The USDA just wants to prevent wide-spread food borne illnesses that are easily preventable. Hence why the small scale experiments where someone eats chicken only cooked to 155 turn out successful all the time.
Note that this isn't to discredit what you're saying. I just wanted to point out that there's more to the guidelines than the parroted parts.
I think many just misunderstand what the food safety guidelines are. The USDA gives you instructions that if you attempt to follow, you will (almost certainly) be safe from any remotely common sources of problems. What it isn't is a set of rules that you absolutely will get in trouble if you violate any of them, or the only possible way to be safe.
> I think many just misunderstand what the food safety guidelines are. The USDA gives you instructions that if you attempt to follow, you will (almost certainly) be safe from any remotely common sources of problems.
I agree with this. But the reason that "many misunderstand what the food safety guidelines are" is because of how they're worded. They're worded as if, if you don't follow them then you will definitely get in trouble.
I agree with this. But the reason that "many misunderstand what the food safety guidelines are" is because of how they're worded. They're worded as if, if you don't follow them then you will definitely get in trouble.
Yes, the point of the rules is not that you can just skirt the edge of safety.
The intention of the rules is that they be easy to understand, easy to follow, and you won't be in danger if you mess up a little bit.
The intention of the rules is that they be easy to understand, easy to follow, and you won't be in danger if you mess up a little bit.
Yes, this is what's being left out. The standards are not designed for someone who is capable about writing an essay discussing the tradeoffs and and evidence for various standards. The standards are designed for someone who is not capable of writing, period. Not that people working in commercial kitchens are unintelligent or untrained, but some are, at least in the language in which they're working. "Only use stuff that says NSF, keep cold under 40, hot over 140." That can be conveyed in a few seconds, to almost anyone.
Furthermore, it provides you a margin of safety. 165 for chicken is going to be pretty dry for white meat, but I'd choose that over medium rare!
If the guidelines occupied a poster-size tree it would be much more difficult to follow them and the consequences would be much more severe.
I also make it a point never to take food safety advice from anyone who doesn't know the difference between "sanitized" and "sterilized".
Furthermore, it provides you a margin of safety. 165 for chicken is going to be pretty dry for white meat, but I'd choose that over medium rare!
If the guidelines occupied a poster-size tree it would be much more difficult to follow them and the consequences would be much more severe.
I also make it a point never to take food safety advice from anyone who doesn't know the difference between "sanitized" and "sterilized".
It is not ‘scientific’ to base risk entirely on experienced probability, especially without taking into account the relative scale of the cost.
A 10% chance of something bad happening could be an acceptable risk or not, depending on how bad the bad outcome is. Is it death? In that case, 10% is way too high... eat that old pizza seven times, and you already have a greater than 50% chance of being dead from food poisoning.
This is the problem with using personal experience for low probability/high cost events. Drunk driving is like this; I know too many people who say “drunk driving isn’t dangerous! I’ve driven drunk dozens of times and have never had anything bad happen!”
Most of the time you are fine, but the extreme cost of what happens when you aren’t make it a risk that should not be taken.
A 10% chance of something bad happening could be an acceptable risk or not, depending on how bad the bad outcome is. Is it death? In that case, 10% is way too high... eat that old pizza seven times, and you already have a greater than 50% chance of being dead from food poisoning.
This is the problem with using personal experience for low probability/high cost events. Drunk driving is like this; I know too many people who say “drunk driving isn’t dangerous! I’ve driven drunk dozens of times and have never had anything bad happen!”
Most of the time you are fine, but the extreme cost of what happens when you aren’t make it a risk that should not be taken.
Except as the author points out, we have more than just our own personal experience to go on. We have the experience of millions of college students, who, as the author notes, are not being dragged out in body bags by the thousands or even hundreds due to eating day-old pizza. Maybe the evidence isn't organized, easily referenced, or particularly well-controlled, but it exists, and to ignore it is just silly.
We're also talking about two different things here, one being the scientific method, the other being risk analysis. Output from the former can be an input to the latter but they're otherwise orthogonal.
On the subject of risk, I don't think the drunk-driving comparison holds because the numbers are completely different. We can point to innumerable cases of drunk-driving resulting in death. But day-old pizza? I'll be surprised if you can find (just picking a number out of my hat here) even ten cases of day-old pizza killing anyone.
We're also talking about two different things here, one being the scientific method, the other being risk analysis. Output from the former can be an input to the latter but they're otherwise orthogonal.
On the subject of risk, I don't think the drunk-driving comparison holds because the numbers are completely different. We can point to innumerable cases of drunk-driving resulting in death. But day-old pizza? I'll be surprised if you can find (just picking a number out of my hat here) even ten cases of day-old pizza killing anyone.
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"If someone eats unrefrigerated pizza ten times without any Adverse Events, then in fact that's an experiment providing (admittedly crude) scientific data that, in fact, the chance of an Adverse Event is no worse than ~10%."
Is that a statistically valid sample?
Let's say the "chance of an Adverse Event" is 0.000001%; literally 1 in a million. There are about 330,000,000 people in the US, all eating leftover, unrefrigerated pizza every morning. That means roughly 330 people get sick every day. If I've got the numbers right, ~0.3% of those who get sick are hospitalized. That is about 0.88/day, or ~6/week. 2.3% of those die, or about 7/year. Sounds perfectly acceptable to me (although those numbers are based on the current USDA regime, not the "try it a few times and if you don't die, you're good to go" approach).
"quick, dirty, wrong calculation because the exact value doesn't matter here"
It kinda does.
Is that a statistically valid sample?
Let's say the "chance of an Adverse Event" is 0.000001%; literally 1 in a million. There are about 330,000,000 people in the US, all eating leftover, unrefrigerated pizza every morning. That means roughly 330 people get sick every day. If I've got the numbers right, ~0.3% of those who get sick are hospitalized. That is about 0.88/day, or ~6/week. 2.3% of those die, or about 7/year. Sounds perfectly acceptable to me (although those numbers are based on the current USDA regime, not the "try it a few times and if you don't die, you're good to go" approach).
"quick, dirty, wrong calculation because the exact value doesn't matter here"
It kinda does.
> In fact the "hick" position is the scientific one. If someone eats unrefrigerated pizza ten times without any Adverse Events, then in fact that's an experiment providing (admittedly crude) scientific data
I'm going to strenuously disagree with this one.
"I've done it 10 times and it has been fine for me" is the logic behind the normalization of deviance and the Shuttle disasters and (in my world) cave diving fatalities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o
As a cave diver I also see this leading to fatalities where divers cut corners on the rules of cave diving, see no immediate consequences and continue to do so up until they wind up dead some day (there are often very binary outcomes for breaking the rules in cave diving).
The author of this article does provide a fairly compelling science-based _hypothesis_ though as to why eating-8-hour-cold-pizza is safe though that goes beyond his personal experience. He does argue that the N is actually very large due to reasonable assumption that many college students do this and there is no evidence of a plague of college students in ERs. He also argues that pizza specifically should be pretty safe after 8 hours due to most of it being composed of things with longer shelf lives and tomato sauce having a low pH.
That is still mostly all the kinds of rationalization that NASA did though. So those should be at least somewhat scientifically tested. A simple survey of college students could determine their practices of how often they ate morning-after pizza that had been left out, along with surveying hospitals and ERs. Then you could lab test actual cold pizzas. That would provide some better scientific basis rather than anecdote and gut checks.
We all expect that if you did this that you'd find that it was substantially more safe than the expert guidelines suggest for those reasons.
HOWEVER leaping all the way to "I did it 10 times and it didn't hurt me" is precisely how cave divers wind up dead. That isn't scientific at all.
And in fact this article suggests a broader connection to the normalization of deviance. There are times where you can get away with it over and over again and nothing bad happens. Many other people can do so as well, because it (presumably) turns out that expert guidance in this case is way too overcautious and dont-sue-me-generalized. What this reinforces is that the normalization of deviance doesn't have any consequences because you can get away with it. And you rationalize using anecdotes as scientific evidence as you just did. That builds confidence to do it in other ways. Then one day you're in charge of the shuttle program or go cave diving and you find out why anecdotes actually aren't scientific the hard way.
That does suggest why those kinds of rule are bad though. Because you find some rule like this and build up a tolerance to breaking it over and over and over again and getting away with it. Then you wind up making a category error at some point in the future and applying that logic to some other rule where you can't do that.
I'm going to strenuously disagree with this one.
"I've done it 10 times and it has been fine for me" is the logic behind the normalization of deviance and the Shuttle disasters and (in my world) cave diving fatalities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o
As a cave diver I also see this leading to fatalities where divers cut corners on the rules of cave diving, see no immediate consequences and continue to do so up until they wind up dead some day (there are often very binary outcomes for breaking the rules in cave diving).
The author of this article does provide a fairly compelling science-based _hypothesis_ though as to why eating-8-hour-cold-pizza is safe though that goes beyond his personal experience. He does argue that the N is actually very large due to reasonable assumption that many college students do this and there is no evidence of a plague of college students in ERs. He also argues that pizza specifically should be pretty safe after 8 hours due to most of it being composed of things with longer shelf lives and tomato sauce having a low pH.
That is still mostly all the kinds of rationalization that NASA did though. So those should be at least somewhat scientifically tested. A simple survey of college students could determine their practices of how often they ate morning-after pizza that had been left out, along with surveying hospitals and ERs. Then you could lab test actual cold pizzas. That would provide some better scientific basis rather than anecdote and gut checks.
We all expect that if you did this that you'd find that it was substantially more safe than the expert guidelines suggest for those reasons.
HOWEVER leaping all the way to "I did it 10 times and it didn't hurt me" is precisely how cave divers wind up dead. That isn't scientific at all.
And in fact this article suggests a broader connection to the normalization of deviance. There are times where you can get away with it over and over again and nothing bad happens. Many other people can do so as well, because it (presumably) turns out that expert guidance in this case is way too overcautious and dont-sue-me-generalized. What this reinforces is that the normalization of deviance doesn't have any consequences because you can get away with it. And you rationalize using anecdotes as scientific evidence as you just did. That builds confidence to do it in other ways. Then one day you're in charge of the shuttle program or go cave diving and you find out why anecdotes actually aren't scientific the hard way.
That does suggest why those kinds of rule are bad though. Because you find some rule like this and build up a tolerance to breaking it over and over and over again and getting away with it. Then you wind up making a category error at some point in the future and applying that logic to some other rule where you can't do that.
Seriously. In decades of riding in cars, I have never once been in a situation where a seatbelt would have prevented injury. Does that make seatbelts a bad idea? Is that even remotely scientific, even though I have a significantly larger sample size?
Bad analogy, seatbelts aren’t intended to operate in the course of normal driving rather their effect is observed during accidents. It’s a weird nuance but easier to see if you take a step back - it’s obvious why “I take a shower everyday and I’ve never needed a seatbelt” is flawed, namely, there’s no causal linkage between showering and seatbelts. The same is true for driving in this case, driving may be a necessary condition for an accident but it’s not sufficient.
To put it another way, your sample size for the test case of seatbelt value, i.e. an accident, appears to be zero rather than large as stated originally.
To put it another way, your sample size for the test case of seatbelt value, i.e. an accident, appears to be zero rather than large as stated originally.
> If someone eats unrefrigerated pizza ten times without any Adverse Events, then in fact that's an experiment providing (admittedly crude) scientific data that, in fact, the chance of an Adverse Event is no worse than ~10%.
Except that the article posits one specific type of pizza where only really the tomato sauce and cheese could cause a problem.
Sure, if you get your standard pizza from Domino's with tomato sauce with preservative and synthe-cheese, it will probably stay edible for decades.
However, did you get fresh mozzarella on that pizza? Or did you order chicken?
Or, did you order something with ranch dressing which has both cream and mayonnaise? Room temperature mayonnaise (generally in picnic potato and macaroni salad) is one of the classic food poisoning sources.
There is a lot of variance here.
Except that the article posits one specific type of pizza where only really the tomato sauce and cheese could cause a problem.
Sure, if you get your standard pizza from Domino's with tomato sauce with preservative and synthe-cheese, it will probably stay edible for decades.
However, did you get fresh mozzarella on that pizza? Or did you order chicken?
Or, did you order something with ranch dressing which has both cream and mayonnaise? Room temperature mayonnaise (generally in picnic potato and macaroni salad) is one of the classic food poisoning sources.
There is a lot of variance here.
calling it a lie seems disingenuous when it's a guideline based on worst-case bacterial multiplication rate, and food safety guidelines are primarily relevant in commercial situations where it's reasonable to be more strict
if you want to argue the advice should be based on how often an activity actually makes people sick, that's reasonable (though hard to measure), but is obviously a way lower safety standard
if you want to argue the advice should be based on how often an activity actually makes people sick, that's reasonable (though hard to measure), but is obviously a way lower safety standard
The last two paragraphs are exactly where I undid all of my reading.
> In the USDA’s standard this is probably a net benefit - you basically know they are lying at all times, ...
Equating the USDA recommendations to lies, because their conservative recommendations are meant for easy understanding and practice undermines any of the above research. Since now you're left wondering what viewpoint the author is advocating any why I'm reading yet another science bashing writer.
> In the USDA’s standard this is probably a net benefit - you basically know they are lying at all times, ...
Equating the USDA recommendations to lies, because their conservative recommendations are meant for easy understanding and practice undermines any of the above research. Since now you're left wondering what viewpoint the author is advocating any why I'm reading yet another science bashing writer.
And yeah it's absolutely not a lie. it's talking about recommendations of an entire population of people all with varying levels of immune system response to pathogens of all ages and sizes and pre-existing conditions. Their guideline is there for the late stage cancer patient as well as the high school athlete in peak physical form. To call it a lie is disingenuous at best and outright malicious at worst.
sure in a vacuum that food might not harbor enough bacteria to make you sick but you don't always grab that food with clean hands and separate the slice from one another with clean hands or if someone sneezed near to the time the box was open and some bad stuff landed on it and then grew like a petri dish. it's good advice to follow in general. just like the fda guideline says cook your chicken to 165ºF they also have a more nuanced outlook on it too with appropriate charts for pasteurization schedules and risk management guidelines for restaurants.
why do they say 165 is the best temp? well that's the temp that if your chicken reaches internally there will be a large log reduction in salmonella populations within mere seconds of reaching that temp. you can cook chicken safely when you do so at a lower temperature but you need to cook it longer. 165 for seconds is safe and a good phrase to teach the general population about.
sure in a vacuum that food might not harbor enough bacteria to make you sick but you don't always grab that food with clean hands and separate the slice from one another with clean hands or if someone sneezed near to the time the box was open and some bad stuff landed on it and then grew like a petri dish. it's good advice to follow in general. just like the fda guideline says cook your chicken to 165ºF they also have a more nuanced outlook on it too with appropriate charts for pasteurization schedules and risk management guidelines for restaurants.
why do they say 165 is the best temp? well that's the temp that if your chicken reaches internally there will be a large log reduction in salmonella populations within mere seconds of reaching that temp. you can cook chicken safely when you do so at a lower temperature but you need to cook it longer. 165 for seconds is safe and a good phrase to teach the general population about.
How do you know? Do you have any evidence that that’s the underlying motivation for all of their recommendations?
For at least one recommendation, the Food Pyramid, many allege the influence of lobbying groups played a role. Do you dispute their claims?
I’m wondering because I’ve been noticing a trend that I’ve read happened towards the end of the USSR: as the rulemakers made ever more nonsensical rules, educated people invented explanations since calling the rules nonsensical wasn’t allowed in polite company.
For at least one recommendation, the Food Pyramid, many allege the influence of lobbying groups played a role. Do you dispute their claims?
I’m wondering because I’ve been noticing a trend that I’ve read happened towards the end of the USSR: as the rulemakers made ever more nonsensical rules, educated people invented explanations since calling the rules nonsensical wasn’t allowed in polite company.
The article is basically saying that you shouldn't blindly trust authority, which is totally fair. The example is also fair, though without the nuance of the guidelines being for commercial restaurants and the like.
The issue though is that the "replacement" answers don't come from anywhere trustworthy either. The issue is the data simply isn't there.
The only "real" answer would be proper testing but if you think there is a chance of illness and death that gets into a huge ethics issue.
Instead the author points to common sense answers, while these are generally fine (talking about each ingredient and it's shelf life) I would argue that each ingredient is very different than when combined. Flour has a much longer lifespan than bread for example.
I don't have any answers myself, but it's certainly something to be discussed.
Though, no one should trust the "I did a bunch of times and I'm fine" argument, cause that's just silly for obvious reasons.
The issue though is that the "replacement" answers don't come from anywhere trustworthy either. The issue is the data simply isn't there.
The only "real" answer would be proper testing but if you think there is a chance of illness and death that gets into a huge ethics issue.
Instead the author points to common sense answers, while these are generally fine (talking about each ingredient and it's shelf life) I would argue that each ingredient is very different than when combined. Flour has a much longer lifespan than bread for example.
I don't have any answers myself, but it's certainly something to be discussed.
Though, no one should trust the "I did a bunch of times and I'm fine" argument, cause that's just silly for obvious reasons.
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> In the specific case, I want to eat pizza the morning after ordering it. My track record clearly shows I’m not going to remember to put it in the fridge.
A much more interesting article would have been about string cheese [1]. It too is something you aren't supposed to leave out. Yet it is very common to put it in packed lunches that won't be eaten until hours later, or to carry it in a backpack all day to use as an afternoon snack, or to take it on camping trips.
With string cheese it is not just about people who can't remember to use a fridge ("Alexa, remind me in two hours to put the leftover pizza in the fridge" would deal with his problem). People are deliberately and on a large scale using string cheese that has been out beyond the recommended time.
Yet illness from string cheese gone bad seems to be very rare.
Is this because string cheese is generally sold packaged as single serving sticks in a tightly sealed wrap and comes from the factory with little or no bacteria, so it is not until you actually open a stick that the clock starts running?
[1] There are several different things called "string cheese". I am referring to what is commonly sold in the US as that [2].
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_cheese#United_States
A much more interesting article would have been about string cheese [1]. It too is something you aren't supposed to leave out. Yet it is very common to put it in packed lunches that won't be eaten until hours later, or to carry it in a backpack all day to use as an afternoon snack, or to take it on camping trips.
With string cheese it is not just about people who can't remember to use a fridge ("Alexa, remind me in two hours to put the leftover pizza in the fridge" would deal with his problem). People are deliberately and on a large scale using string cheese that has been out beyond the recommended time.
Yet illness from string cheese gone bad seems to be very rare.
Is this because string cheese is generally sold packaged as single serving sticks in a tightly sealed wrap and comes from the factory with little or no bacteria, so it is not until you actually open a stick that the clock starts running?
[1] There are several different things called "string cheese". I am referring to what is commonly sold in the US as that [2].
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_cheese#United_States
I suspect that there is a lot of variability in the category of "cheese" as to what needs to be refrigerated. We just say it all does because we don't know where the line is.
Anecdotally, cheese can often be kept out for a very long time; it mostly just gets slimy. I often take cheddar camping in warm weather for a day or two without issue, or even more days if it's packaged string cheese. Of course your mileage may vary.
Cheese developed as a way to preserve calories such that they last a long time (also, is already effectively mold). If you don't mind a bit of continued growth, it can be stable for a long time.
Source: I've taken blocks of cheese on multi-week camping trips with no issues. Wrap and seal them well, cut off the newly blue bits if you aren't comfortable eating them them, you'll probably be fine.
Source: I've taken blocks of cheese on multi-week camping trips with no issues. Wrap and seal them well, cut off the newly blue bits if you aren't comfortable eating them them, you'll probably be fine.
This person needs to be introduced to ChubbyEmu:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0d6Dpx2li4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0d6Dpx2li4
I think the core issue here is adverse selection. The scientists that are most likely to hold decision making positions in government or that are most likely to speak to the press are also most likely to be the ones that protect their careers, even at the expense of scientific rigor and basic honesty.
The US congress used to have a team of non-partisan scientists to help inform policy. They hired scientists with stellar reputations, and were known to respond truthfully regardless of the political implications (as was their job).
Eventually both parties got lazy, and decided it was easier to disband the group than to craft reality-based legislation.
Things have gone downhill since.
The US congress used to have a team of non-partisan scientists to help inform policy. They hired scientists with stellar reputations, and were known to respond truthfully regardless of the political implications (as was their job).
Eventually both parties got lazy, and decided it was easier to disband the group than to craft reality-based legislation.
Things have gone downhill since.
I think his argument that the USDA puts out these really broad rules because they “don’t trust us to be smart enough” is unfair. It isn’t about trust or intelligence. It is about practicality. They can’t put out guidelines for every single possible type of food, combined with every possible temperature and bacterial environment.
They have to make conservative, broad statements that say “do this and you will be safe.” They aren’t saying “don’t do this and you won’t be safe”, just that they can’t be sure.
They have to make conservative, broad statements that say “do this and you will be safe.” They aren’t saying “don’t do this and you won’t be safe”, just that they can’t be sure.
> about the closest I can come to a document case of tomato sauce related food poisoning is this 20-year old who died from eating spaghetti. His case is not a lot help though, since he had apparently left the spaghetti unrefrigerated for five days, and since the toxins they found were in the noodles, not the sauce.
I think the interface between the sauce and the crust in a pizza has some similarities to a noodle. Reading the study linked in the article makes me more hesitant to eat 'aged pizza' (as I used to call it in my college days)
I think the interface between the sauce and the crust in a pizza has some similarities to a noodle. Reading the study linked in the article makes me more hesitant to eat 'aged pizza' (as I used to call it in my college days)
> they don’t get in trouble for you throwing away good food, but they potentially get in lots of trouble if you eat bad food on their recommendation. Their incentive in that situation is to be almost comically conservative
This seems like a common failure mode of bureaucracies. It reminds me in particular of the FAA's medical division (just because that's one bureaucracy I butt heads with a lot). They'll never get in trouble for saying no; "comically conservative" doesn't even begin to describe it.
This seems like a common failure mode of bureaucracies. It reminds me in particular of the FAA's medical division (just because that's one bureaucracy I butt heads with a lot). They'll never get in trouble for saying no; "comically conservative" doesn't even begin to describe it.
Could you remind me what the absolute risk of travel by airline is, again?
Unless you've had personal, repeated experience dealing directly with the FAA on aeromedical matters, I suggest you listen to someone who actually has. I know how to do a risk analysis, and aviation is a much more varied field than just scheduled air carrier operations.
I'm a professional flight instructor. I also sit two desks over from a non-FAA-affiliated flight surgeon at my day job. I watch student pilots go through the medical process all the time. It is infuriating to see the outlandish and expensive hoop-jumping nonsense that these folks get put through. I'm talking thousands of dollars of exams in some very common cases that have absolutely no evidentiary basis for increased risk. And those are the ones that don't just get denied outright, with no avenue for appeal.
On the rare occasion when aeromedical does see the light, it's pulling teeth. It took years for the American Diabetes Association to convince the FAA that they were wrong about diabetes. And when they finally relented, they dragged on their feet on actually issuing the medicals.
The aeromedical division has become so hostile and ossified that Congress has had to tell them to cut it out.
It's a problem. And it's exemplary of what happens when an authority has the kind of incentives under discussion here. They will never get in trouble for saying no, even when saying no flies in the face of all actual evidence.
I'm a professional flight instructor. I also sit two desks over from a non-FAA-affiliated flight surgeon at my day job. I watch student pilots go through the medical process all the time. It is infuriating to see the outlandish and expensive hoop-jumping nonsense that these folks get put through. I'm talking thousands of dollars of exams in some very common cases that have absolutely no evidentiary basis for increased risk. And those are the ones that don't just get denied outright, with no avenue for appeal.
On the rare occasion when aeromedical does see the light, it's pulling teeth. It took years for the American Diabetes Association to convince the FAA that they were wrong about diabetes. And when they finally relented, they dragged on their feet on actually issuing the medicals.
The aeromedical division has become so hostile and ossified that Congress has had to tell them to cut it out.
It's a problem. And it's exemplary of what happens when an authority has the kind of incentives under discussion here. They will never get in trouble for saying no, even when saying no flies in the face of all actual evidence.
How about the relative risk between scheduled air carriers and private pilots?
I absolutely got extremely violent food poisoning from eating pizza left out overnight. While this is not sufficient to build a policy on, it is my personal mission to tell everyone who will listen to please just put the pizza in the refrigerator.
> from
How do you know it wasn't just "after" instead of "from"?
How do you know it wasn't just "after" instead of "from"?
With pizza, here's my thought process. Firstly, overnight has no special significance for food. If you order a pizza at 9 PM and wake up at 7 AM, then that is roughly the same as ordering pizza at 11 AM and eating it later at 9 PM. So just thinking in terms of hours, I think I've seen bad pizza (ie, pizza with visible mold growth) at 48 hours. I do not remember having any bad experiences with pizza that has been out for 12 hours or so. Usually my rule-of-thumb is around 12 hours, but if I'm desperate maybe 16 hours. If old pizza is just one of many food options, probably 8 hours.
However, I think the author is being a bit silly with painting this as a matter of liar vs truth-teller. The truth is that without much more detail about the food and your environment, estimating time to spoilage is just an educated guess.
However, I think the author is being a bit silly with painting this as a matter of liar vs truth-teller. The truth is that without much more detail about the food and your environment, estimating time to spoilage is just an educated guess.
Nitpick, which depends on your local conditions and time of year, but night hours are often colder which changes growth rates. If you're making kefir or something you may notice a difference depending on when you start a batch if you heat or cool individual rooms rather than the entire house including the kitchen.
"Thus this is simultaneously “a dangerous food safety thing people commonly do” and “relatively high risk” (Conor regrettably does not say what this risk is high relative to; it’s almost certainly high compared to eating a fresh saltine, less so compared to doing wheelies on a motorcycle in traffic)."
This is a problem.
I've met people who advocated feeding their pets cooked, bone-in chicken. That's kind of a bad idea, but you can get away with it for a very long time. Or, if you get unlucky, ....
Risks are frequently presented on a "relative risk" basis; do X and your risk of cancer Y is 20 times greater. Except that your risk of cancer Y is minuscule and 20 times more is only slightly less minuscule. On the other hand, there are 300+ million people in the US; 300 million times something minuscule can still be a noticeable number.
So when the USDA says, "If a perishable food (such as meat or poultry) has been left out at room temperature overnight (more than two hours) it may not be safe. Discard it, even though it may look and smell good," they do that because if they don't, hundreds or thousands of restaurants in the country will keep perishable food, perhaps much longer than overnight, and the result will be a daily death toll.
So, allow me to rephrase one of his interpretations: "some foods might be a significant risk after several hours, but we can’t trust [a 16-year old minimum wage employee or that sketchy dude whose food truck keeps changing names] to sort out which ones [given that specifying which ones would require several thousand pages of fine print], or to keep close track of your cut-off time [which varies by local atmospheric conditions, among other things], so we are saying two hours is the limit for virtually all foods to keep [even someone immune-compromised] safe and our smart asses covered".
You can call that a lie, if you like. Kind of like how "if the net force on an object is zero, then the velocity of the object is constant" is a lie, too.
Do I eat pizza that has been left out overnight? Sure. Heck, I'll eat stuff that's far enough along to be visibly sketchy. But I have a functional immune system and the worst case is that I get sick (or die). But I'm a lot more cautious when I'm cooking for someone else, and I tend not to cook for large numbers of people because I don't know all those stupid rules.
But when someone says something like, "USDA’s bullshit mega-overcautious-standard", I'm calling their opinion horseshit. Because that is exactly how you get anti-vaxxers and measles outbreaks.
This is a problem.
I've met people who advocated feeding their pets cooked, bone-in chicken. That's kind of a bad idea, but you can get away with it for a very long time. Or, if you get unlucky, ....
Risks are frequently presented on a "relative risk" basis; do X and your risk of cancer Y is 20 times greater. Except that your risk of cancer Y is minuscule and 20 times more is only slightly less minuscule. On the other hand, there are 300+ million people in the US; 300 million times something minuscule can still be a noticeable number.
So when the USDA says, "If a perishable food (such as meat or poultry) has been left out at room temperature overnight (more than two hours) it may not be safe. Discard it, even though it may look and smell good," they do that because if they don't, hundreds or thousands of restaurants in the country will keep perishable food, perhaps much longer than overnight, and the result will be a daily death toll.
So, allow me to rephrase one of his interpretations: "some foods might be a significant risk after several hours, but we can’t trust [a 16-year old minimum wage employee or that sketchy dude whose food truck keeps changing names] to sort out which ones [given that specifying which ones would require several thousand pages of fine print], or to keep close track of your cut-off time [which varies by local atmospheric conditions, among other things], so we are saying two hours is the limit for virtually all foods to keep [even someone immune-compromised] safe and our smart asses covered".
You can call that a lie, if you like. Kind of like how "if the net force on an object is zero, then the velocity of the object is constant" is a lie, too.
Do I eat pizza that has been left out overnight? Sure. Heck, I'll eat stuff that's far enough along to be visibly sketchy. But I have a functional immune system and the worst case is that I get sick (or die). But I'm a lot more cautious when I'm cooking for someone else, and I tend not to cook for large numbers of people because I don't know all those stupid rules.
But when someone says something like, "USDA’s bullshit mega-overcautious-standard", I'm calling their opinion horseshit. Because that is exactly how you get anti-vaxxers and measles outbreaks.
I drunkenly ate a two week old Papa Johns pepperoni pizza one time - literally sitting unrefrigerated in the box in an office for ~ two weeks - and suffered no ill effects.
This kind of thing always reminds me of a rule I was taught in sixth grade English - you may never start a sentence with the word and.
This is, of course, totally incorrect both from the usage and grammatical perspectives. Nonetheless, most people (especially when the people in question are sixth graders) will be better served in terms of the quality of writing they product by simply following the rule rather than spending the time to try to fully understand the nuance behind it.
This is, of course, totally incorrect both from the usage and grammatical perspectives. Nonetheless, most people (especially when the people in question are sixth graders) will be better served in terms of the quality of writing they product by simply following the rule rather than spending the time to try to fully understand the nuance behind it.
>Nonetheless, most people (especially when the people in question are sixth graders) will be better served in terms of the quality of writing they product by simply following the rule rather than spending the time to try to fully understand the nuance behind it.
Maybe. I remember being taught the no-and-rule, and I remember some people just started using the word "also" instead. Technically they were following the rule, but since they didn't understand the reasoning behind the rule, they made the same error but in a different way.
Maybe. I remember being taught the no-and-rule, and I remember some people just started using the word "also" instead. Technically they were following the rule, but since they didn't understand the reasoning behind the rule, they made the same error but in a different way.
The example I always think of is from Lincoln's Second Inaugural:
"Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came."
"Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came."
Does anyone in this thread have school age children? Or ever packed a sack lunch? Lunch meat, mayonnaise, cheese, cut fruit, even pizza are all common in lunches. These are always out for over 2 hours and very rarely packed with ice or a cold pack (those that do are likely only doing it to adhere to said guidelines). This should make it obvious how comically conservative the food safety guidelines as given by the government are. As the author states, there’s almost no benefit to the guidelines being relaxed, because, hey, maybe someone does get sick.
Death or newsworthy illness is not my only concern. I'm also worried about stomach discomfort that prevents me from sleeping, repeatedly farting so loud the neighbors can hear it, and diarrhea that makes me have to rearrange my schedule to take a day off--things that happened to me recently due to being cavalier about food safety. That's not going to come up in the author's research, because I just took my best guess at the culprit and made a note to be more careful in the future.
Eat the pizza if you want, and most the time you'll probably be fine. But the author's depiction of the risk model (college students in body bags) isn't what I'm thinking about when I make the decision.
Eat the pizza if you want, and most the time you'll probably be fine. But the author's depiction of the risk model (college students in body bags) isn't what I'm thinking about when I make the decision.