On supermarket conveyer belts

Is it bad to raw dog your produce on the grocery store conveyor belt (to avoid using the single use plastic bags)?

One wonders how dirty those conveyer belts are. These days they’re probably lab-grade sterile given how trendy spraying and wiping has become, but in 2019 I’d bet the bacteria levels on a grocery conveyer rivaled those found on rollercoaster harnesses.

It doesn’t really matter if your produce picks up a little extra something-something while they’re riding along that black rubber highway because you diligently wash your produce when you get home from the grocery store. Right?

I do not always wash my produce because I am lazy and armed with the following piece of knowledge: The risk of getting food poisoning is lowest with produce that gets cooked or peeled (e.g. onions, mangos) and highest with the stuff that gets eaten raw (e.g. romaine lettuce, cilantro). I always wash the risky stuff and I have a mixed record with the stuff that gets cooked or peeled.  

But what about pesticides? (...you might ask, if you are from a very blue state.) Well I doubt the supermarket is crop dusting El Conveyer Real but also I don’t have a good answer for you.  I buy groceries at street stalls in the lower east side of Manhattan and I arrive home tired and hungry. Sometimes I wash my produce, other times I don’t. I probably consume the median amount of pesticides and I don’t really know what it means. Maybe my gut biome looks like Chernobyl or maybe it looks like a Phish concert.

Scientific renderings of the possible states of my gut biome

If you reside in the quadrant representing “avoid single use plastic bags” and “doesn’t wash produce” then you’re playing the food-poisoning lottery. Just like every other lottery, you probably won’t hit the jackpot (today’s prize: crippling diarrhea) but you still could, so just wash your produce.

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On room temperature dairy

When I'm making cream cheese frosting, the recipe specifies using "room temperature" butter and cream cheese. How long can I leave these items on the kitchen counter before I court danger? I've left both out for up to six hours with seemingly no problems.

The standard USDA line about leaving food out is that you have 4 hours before it becomes unsafe to eat. This is very conservative, but it’s meant to provide guidance to old people and sick people and babies whose immune systems couldn’t easily fight off a sprinkling of bacteria.

Assuming you’re not old, sick, or a baby, here’s how you should think of your frosting ingredients:

When the dose [of cream cheese frosting] hits

Butter— Don’t worry about it. Unrefrigerated butter can go a week, minimum, before it starts tasting funny (which is when you should stop eating it.) 

Cream cheese— Worry about it, but just a little. Follow the standard 4-hour rule; it should be plenty soft by then. As for five or six hours...well, bacteria growth is only a problem if there’s bacteria in the food to begin with. Extra thawed cream cheese isn’t dangerous unless Philadelphia made some egregious processing errors when they were whipping da shmear. 

So when you black in and realize that your room-temp dairy has been oozing on the countertop all afternoon, ask yourself this: do I trust that Philadelphia didn’t fuck up this cream cheese? 

For me, the answer is always “yes”, because almost no risk is too great to overwhelm the reward of dunking my spoon into a bowl of pillowy tangy frosting. But you do you.

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On shrimp tails in Cinnamon Toast Crunch

God, it’s such a delight when the news cycle is blessed with Food Safety News. Nothing gets me out of bed faster. 

Today we’re going to break down the Cinnamon Toast Crunch Shrimp Mystery in exhaustive detail. By doing so, we will reach a strong hypothesis about what happened and whether you need to worry about sugar-frosted shramps in your morning bowl.

What we know: A comedian named Jensen Karp found several foreign objects (that’s an industry term) in his box of cereal. At first, It appeared to be 2 shrimp tails. Jenson reached out to Cinnamon Toast Crunch and they told him not to worry; it was just clumps of sugar. Karp kept looking in his bag o’ cereal and discovered several other items that struck him as peculiar.

But there’s more:  Karp’s family-sized box contained two bags of cereal. On the other (unopened box), he noticed that the bottom of the bag had been re-sealed with clear tape and that it contained something stringy (he called it “floss”) along with a second knotty length of string.

Now, to a Pro™ like me, this appears at first to be nothing new. Foreign object contamination is common in industrial food processing. Two years ago I found a piece of ceramic tile in my Breyer’s ice cream. Did I eat the ice cream anyway? Yes. It was Vanilla, my favorite flavor. I’m not a prude. 

But if at first glance the Karp case seems unremarkable, a second look surfaces some...let’s say, irregularities. In order of suspiciousness:

1. The foreign objects found in the cereal appear totally unrelated and don’t point towards a specific failure in the manufacturing process. (For example, the ceramic shard in my tub of Breyer’s was probably an aging piece of wall tile that got power washed straight into a mixer.) But what’s the commonality between shrimp tails, string, and different string? Beats me. None of these things has any place on a manufacturing floor.

2. The re-taped bag strongly points to tampering after the product left the factory. 

3. The bag of shrimp-containing cereal appears to have not been tampered with. If this is true, then the foreign objects were introduced to the cereal bag before it was sealed on the factory floor.

So what the hell happened?

I’m going to lay out seven scenarios. Pick which one you believe is correct. I’ll reveal the answer below.

Scenario #1 A General Mills employee stuffs some shrimp tails into his coat pocket after a seafood lunch, as a souvenir. Back on the cereal boxing line, he leans over a tumbler full of cereal and his coat pocket spills shrimp tails plus random string / lint into the mixture. Little bitta string, little bitta shrimp, straight into the cereal tumbler. Oops!

Likelihood: Low. Employees on the manufacturing line don’t wear the same clothes on the plant floor as they do on their lunch breaks. Rather, they have dedicated gowns worn only on the factory floor which are designed specifically without breast pockets so that there’s no possibility anything could fall into the food. The recurring problem of “random shit ending up in the food” means that employees only use retractable pens (pen caps are a liability) and papers are always loose, since staples also inevitably end up in the food. What if you cut your hand on the job? You’ll be given a blue bandaid (easiest color to spot) which also contains traces of metal so it will show up on the metal detectors that scan outgoing shipments. Genius! 

Scenario #2: The foreign objects originated in the ingredients sourced by GM which were used to make Cinnamon Toast Crunch. This happened in a similar case in which a 1.24 million pound shipment of blueberries became contaminated with shrimp

Likelihood: Low-Medium The possibility of ingredient contamination is high, especially when the ingredients are raw agricultural products (e.g. cinnamon) that pass through poorly managed warehouses with sub-par food safety conditions. But if this were the case, you’d expect the contamination to be spread throughout the whole batch of CTC, not just two bags, right? The, uh, extremely local nature of this quality defect — just two bags— suggests that the problem either occurred downstream or is much more widespread than we currently realize. If 500 MORE shrimp-contaminated bags of General Mills cereal are revealed then this would suggest the problem occurred further upstream (e.g during manufacturing or at an ingredient supplier’s facility) .

“Leave me out of this”

Scenario #3 Someone tampered with the boxes of cereal after they left the GM plant. Much like in the famed Chicago Tylenol Murders, someone along the supply chain opened the packaging and inserted foreign objects into the bag  for nefarious purposes and then resealed them. 

Likelihood: Medium. The re-taped bag is a compelling clue. My hunch is that post-factory tampering played a role in this snafu, because there is zero possibility that an opened bag of cereal would be retaped and approved for shipment in a General Mills plant. Maybe some guy wandered into the supermarket cereal aisle with filthy pockets and a very specific vision. 

Scenario #4 The product was damaged along the supply chain and the damage was covered up. 

Likelihood: Low.  Picture this: a dopey forklift driver in a Long Island warehouse plows a pallet of cereal into a concrete pylon. Cinnamon Toast Crunch everywhere. Many boxes are damaged beyond salvage but some of the boxes can be patched up with a little tape and — bada-bing, they’re good to sell! While this scenario doesn’t explain the shrimp or the bits of string, you’ve never been in a Long Island food distribution hub, have you? Here’s my point: The products may have been tampered with but the tampering may have been a sloppy—not nefarious— effort at cleaning up an honest mistake made in frighteningly unhygienic conditions.

However, there’s still a gap in this scenario: Both of the bags are contaminated with foreign objects but only bag #2 shows signs of tempering. Either we’re overlooking some subtle tampering with bag #1, or the shrimp was already in the bag when it was sealed... in which case this thing goes all the way to the top (the GM manufacturing line).

“OMW to contaminate your breakfast squares”

Scenario #5 This is the outcome of poor manufacturing design or execution at GM’s processing plant.

Likelihood: Very Low There’s no world in which General Mills processes shrimp on the same equipment they use to make their cereal. Even if they made Cinnamon Toast Shrimp, it would be produced on unique equipment and in a separate building. Food manufacturers like GM are audited by firms whose sole purpose is to structurally eliminate food safety risk. If GM had shrimp anywhere near their cereal production line this would have triggered a failed audit before the cereal was ever on shelves.

Aside from passing their biannual food safety audits, GM has a strong financial incentive to avoid poisoning their customers with undeclared allergens (e.g. shrimp). This has to do with the specific nature of how food allergens, as opposed to bacteria, make people sick.

Here’s what I mean: When a company sells a product with an undisclosed allergen (e.g. shellfish, nuts, milk) they are legally required to disclose what allergens are in that product. When they fail to make these disclosures, the mistake is exposed very quickly. This is because every person who has a food allergy and who eats that product will get sick. Or die. People with food allergies know this and they don’t take chances. But the relationship between consuming harmful bacteria and any subsequent illness is less clear.

For example, if ten people consumed pancake batter laden with salmonella, the results would be inconsistent. Some people might get sick and some people would not get sick at all. Among those who did get sick some might not feel symptoms for two days while others might not feel anything for a week. In other words, it wouldn’t be obvious that there was a common source of the illness experienced by the group, much less what source was. But when it comes to eating food allergens, the symptoms typically onset in minutes, making it easy to pinpoint the culprit containing the allergen.

What this all means is that food manufacturers are rightly terrified of having undisclosed allergens in their products because it can be so easily traced to the company. When there’s shrimp in your cereal it’s hard to blame anything except corporate negligence. The potential for ruinous lawsuits related to undisclosed allergens could bankrupt even General Mills.

So back to the shrimpy cereal: The takeaway here is that if this problem originated at GM, it wasn’t because there is a flaw in the design of their manufacturing line or that some shift worker added shrimp instead of cinnamon. These risks have been structurally eliminated long ago.

Scenario #6 It’s a hoax. Ugh, I’m not gonna even go into this. 

Likelihood: The guy who found the shrimpy cereal is a “podcast host and comedy writer,” so you do the math.

Scenario #7 These things are not shrimp tails.

Likelihood: They look like shrimp tails to me, but I also saw the dress as white and gold, so my eyes shan’t be trusted. Still, it doesn’t explain the string.

My Hypothesis:

This was knowingly caused by a single individual for god knows what reason. Something along the lines of Scenarios #3 and #4.  This spectacle isn’t about the failure of industrial food, it is more likely about a man who has trouble communicating his feelings.

Runner up hypothesis

Something along the lines of Scenario #2 — these little morsels of non-cereal arrived in one of the ingredients used to make Cinnamon Toast Crunch. As frightening as it is to imagine literal trash rolling across the cereal conveyer belts unnoticed, it’s totally possible. General Mills wouldn’t hate this theory because it would allow them to blame someone else — their cinnamon supplier who they can publicly sever ties with. But if this is the case you can bet we’ll see a whole lotta cereal being recalled off the shelves.

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On that steak you left out

Hello Mr. NNVV. I recently left my leftover steak out on my counter overnight (and unfortunately we're talking a nice prime Ribeye). When I found it in the morning, I threw it away, but per your published leftover advice, could I have been safe to heat this up until it was piping hot and eat with a couple of eggs in the morning? It feels like a different scenario with the lack of refrigeration, but would any bacteria have made it through 2.5 minutes in the microwave or a long reheat on the stove?

Steak losses aside, you made a thoughtfully reasoned assessment of food safety risk and it brings a tear to my eye. Let’s review both lines of reasoning:

A health inspector would say: some bacteria could have found its way onto the steak and the lack of refrigeration could have allowed that bacteria flourish throughout the night. The mere possibility of a presence of harmful bacteria means you shouldn’t take the risk in trying to revive it.

I take issue with this narrative for a few reasons:

1. You left the steak out immediately after having cooked it… so there shouldn’t be any bacteria to grow on this steak in the first place. Unless you have leaky sewage lines crisscrossing above your countertop (or a cat) I don’t see any meaningful opportunity for bacterial contamination.
   

2. Overnight (10 hours) isn’t a huge amount of time for bacteria to grow, particularly if we’re starting with a really low level of plausible contamination and a food that isn’t known for explosive bacteria growth (cooked steak). If you had said “scallops” or “lobster tail” I would have advised you to burn your home to the ground.
   

3. You’re gonna recook it anyway, eliminating the major pathogens of concern.

Me watching leftovers cook

So how long should you reheat it for? it’s the temperature that matters. You’ll want to scorch that bad boy to 165ºF but I think it’s pretty unreasonable to expect anyone to hit leftovers with a meat thermometer, so “piping hot” is an acceptable shorthand. 

I know your ribeye does not deserve this kind of heavy-handed cooking, but well-done steak is better than no steak.

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On that milk frothing wand

How afraid should I be of the milk frothing wand on my espresso maker? On the one hand, steam heat on a daily basis. On the other hand, dairy and not washed with soap. Nothing will keep me from my twice daily cappuccino, but if I ever get food poisoning, is the wand a potential culprit?

A sequence of images has been seared into my memory from every time I’ve ever watched a professional barista prepare an espresso drink. There’s the intensity of eye contact between man and milk as he cultivates the foam, the ritualistic bonking of metal milk pitcher against countertop, and the bobbing pour that transforms a lowly shot of espresso into your twice-daily sustenance. I never know whether this is pure theater or whether the omission of any one of these movements would yield a shitty cappu.

Me, I’m a drip coffee man. My standards fall somewhere between that of a cowboy and a teenager pulling his first all-nighter. I drink it for the jolt; it’s a bonus if most of the grounds have been filtered out.

But next time you’re at a coffee place, pay close attention to the final step of the barista’s dance. It’s pure food safety science. Donning a folded kitchen towel like a catcher’s mitt, the barista will spin the metal wheel and give the spewing steam wand a few tugs with his mitt. Thus, in one motion, he both distributes the pathogen-killing steam heat across the surface of the wand and wipes away any lingering milk-residue. The dance concludes. Customarily, the barista will then announce he’s going on break so he can smoke a clove cigarette and listen to the contemporary equivalent of Rusted Root. 

Your barista

As you mentioned, the sterilizing effects of the steam is the important part of this ritual, whether you order your drink or make it at home. Simultaneously giving the wand a quick wipe will prevent milk from burning and caking onto the wand. If the shaft gets permanently dirty, try steaming a little pitcher of soapy water and then hit it with the mitt. 

Bottom line: you’re not cultivating a food safety catastrophe with your espresso machine. If you do get food poisoning there’s a good chance that you played a role in it... but it’s unlikely that your coffee droid is the culprit.

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On not using soap

Re: cast iron, does that mean we don’t actually need to use soap on any pots or pans (if we scrub off any debris)?

Think of soap like double-sided tape, except one side only sticks to water and one side only sticks to oil. When you suds up a pan, the oil-lovin’ side clings to the greasy debris. Then, when you rinse water on it, the water-lovin’ side of the soap clings to the water and the whole bundle of filth detaches from your pan and goes down the drain.

Under a microscope you can see that soap mechanically clings to grime

It’s possible to clean dishes without soap but it’s hard to know whether you got everything off.  Does it actually matter?

Yes and no. Heat eliminates most food safety concerns, but I’ll mention two hazards which may persist in a soapless kitchen:

1. Allergens: No amount of stovetop heat will destroy the proteins that trigger food allergies (e.g. nuts, shellfish, milk). You have to physically remove those particles by washing the pan really well until every particle is removed. Even a really small amount of an allergen can trigger a reaction in a sensitive eater.
   
   For those anti-soap Luddites in the crowd, you could use an entirely different set of dishes to prepare non-allergen-containing foods, but this is pretty easy to screw up and you might end up dropping one of your BFFs in the process. Worth it?
   

2. Toxins: Some bacteria produce toxins which can cause acute poisoning in humans. The same logic applies here as above: toxins aren’t alive, so you can’t kill them with heat. But soap will remove them.
   

Final take? If you’re thinking about pursuing a soapless policy for your fleet of fry pans, you have my endorsement — but be mindful of allergens. 

Outside of that,  I wouldn’t pursue soapless policies with any other kitchenwares.

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