On frozen food going bad

Are there any items that we keep in the freezer that go bad?

The reason we freeze food in the first case is somewhat creepy. Freezing food does not (necessarily) kill any bacteria in it, but it will put that bacteria into suspended animation.The appearance and texture of frozen food might deteriorate but it won't turn poisonous because there’s no bacteria growth. So as long as frozen food stays frozen, it’s safe to eat.

Here’s where you should worry: Have you ever opened an ice cream bar to find it frozen into the distorted shape of its own plastic packaging? In the industry, we call this a sign of temperature abuse. At some point the ice cream melted and then refroze. 

See visible signs of temperature abuse. Jack is a dangerous food.

You do not want to eat anything that was accidentally thawed and later refrozen. A temperature level capable of melting ice cream is also capable of supporting bacteria growth. Was there any bacteria in the food in the first place? You have no idea. If so, did it grow to unsafe levels during that time? Again, you have no idea, so best to not eat temperature abused foods.

“But wait,” you might ask. “Once the ice cream re-freezes, doesn’t that undo the bacteria growth?” No. Read the first paragraph again. The freezing process doesn’t kill bacteria growth that has already occurred. Bad ice cream will lay your ass out. Bacteria can be picky about what sorts of foods they live in, but they all love ice cream and they will make you scream.

Or consider that bag of peas you’ve been using as an occasional ice pack for the last two years. How many times have you thawed that bag over your knee and then hurled it back into the freezer? I can’t imagine a more systematic program of targeted vegetable abuse. If you use frozen vegetables to reduce swelling then consider labeling the bag “DON’T EAT” or drawing a skull and crossbones on it.

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On communal salt bowls

How questionable is it to have one of those little salt bowls that everyone takes a pinch from?

Your instinct to be concerned about a communal finger-food bowl situation is correct. In theory, a pinch bowl is a cesspool of bacteria. But the bowl of salt—even one that sees a lot of action— is safe.

Bacteria can’t grow in salt. This is why salt is the original food preservative. (Think: Vikings preserving fish; Egyptians preserving humans, aka mummies*). 

Salt is an effective preservative, just ask the Egyptians

In many cases, salt kills bacteria and viruses by voraciously sucking the moisture out of them, much like me with a margarita at an airport bar. So: pinch away! 

*Which naturally raises the question: could you eat a mummy without getting sick? Uhh...technically...yes.

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On eating bugs

Is there any negative effect to all the bugs I'm probably accidentally eating on the organic lettuces/berries I buy? Sometimes I look a little too closely and find something creepy / crawly on something I'm about to put in my mouth.

When I lived in Indonesia my neighbor cooked me latkes, or that’s how I initially interpreted what they were. The first bite was delicious. Then I made eye contact with a small fish protruding from my bite mark.  I looked more closely and realized that every sliver of potato was actually a minnow. They were fish-cakes made from tiny, whole fish. In retrospect, the fact that I was living in a 99% Muslim fishing village should have been a tip off that I was not eating latkes. 

Aside from that, I also ate a ton of bugs. It was a really buggy island. Or maybe it was just me. In my journal, I noted that I was often greeted with the refrain, “Mr. Ned, you are covered in ants.”  Naturally the ants found their way into my food and I quickly adopted a policy of eating in low light so I wouldn’t see the bugs I was nom nom’ing. This wasn’t totally convenient so I shifted towards not looking at my food while I ate. Eventually, I accepted that I was going to eat a lot of bugs and stopped caring. That said, I experienced violent food poisoning on a weekly basis. I never really considered that these two things might be related before now. Huh. 

The food safety risk associated with bugs isn’t that they’re poisonous— it’s that they’re dirty. Flies live in filth and shit; the food safety concern is that they’re transmitting pathogenic bacteria from this filth onto your food when they land on it. 

If you see small flies in a restaurant, that means there’s unsanitary conditions (i.e. literal griminess) somewhere in the immediate area. If you see big flies (house flies) then I would leave that restaurant immediately. Houseflies live on shit and decomposing animals. Houseflies in any food establishment should be a giant warning sign.

So back to your buggy produce: It’s a good idea to rinse even your organic fruit and veggies. Even though there aren’t any pesticides to wash away, there might be dirt and a few bugs. Should you be worried about these bugs? I guess that depends where those bugs were before they ended up in your lettuce and how dirty their feet are. They were probably moseying around the organic farm which doesn’t sound too bad to me. Eat ‘em.

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On sponges

I’ve heard sponges are a hotbed for bacteria. I only replace my sponges when they get tattered but now I’m thinking this isn’t often enough. Should I be throwing out my sponges every week?

I sometimes think that the filthiest thing in the world is a bar of soap. But despite contacting every bit of filth, the soap molecules that bind to the filth end up getting washed away, so the soap bar itself remains fairly clean.

Does the same logic apply to your sponge? Kind of. Insofar as a sponge is wet, room temperature, and covered in food debris then it will host bacteria growth. You can avoid this by thoughtfully washing your sponge with soap and hot water after you’re done doing dishes. Then wring it out and store it somewhere where it will dry. 

But this just prevents continued bacteria growth on your sponge. 

How do you reset the bacteria-counter to zero? You can run your sponge through the dishwasher where the heat exposure will sanitize it. But I don’t have a dishwasher, so here’s what I do: I wring out the sponge, lay it in the sink and dump boiling water on it until it’s soaked through (about 1 cup). This will instantly kill all of the bacteria that has accumulated, sanitizing your sponge.

Now that you know how to eliminate sponge-risk there’s no need to unwrap a new one every week. You can use the same sponge until wears out.

On supermarket sushi

Would you eat supermarket sushi?

Sushi is one of those foods — like oysters or eggs —  that evokes a powerful yet ill-defined feeling of FSP (Food Safety Panic). Sure, sushi is fishy and raw, but what exactly is the danger here? And what is it about being sold from a supermarket that elevates the fear?

Your question is a reasonable one but it’s also a reminder that notions of safe food are more ideological than scientific —  a disjointed set of beliefs and fears that we employ to avoid barfing.  

Still, you’re not wrong. There are several factors that make sushi distinctly dangerous:

1. Parasites: raw fish can contain parasites like tapeworms and nematodes*. It’s really really rare, but the wrong sushi could lead to you unwittingly hosting a 30 ft tapeworm in your GI tract for the next 25 years.  Having a tapeworm isn’t the worst —your  appetite might change a little bit and you might get anemic from the nutrients they’re thieving. But otherwise you won’t know that you have one of these dudes living inside you until he pokes his head out (this actually happens). 

parasitic worms

My buddy Rick picked up a worm when he was living in Indonesia and subsisting mainly on fish. He had no clue until months later when he pooped out a giant worm. It was after a weekend of heavy boozing at a beer festival and Rick’s doctor said that the worm had probably died of alcohol poisoning. Savage.

Cooking will kill parasites, but this doesn’t work in the case of sushi. Because, duh, it’s supposed to be raw. So instead, sushi fish is treated to extremely low temperatures, which also happen to kill parasites.

What I’m trying to say is this: every bite of sushi and sashimi you’ve ever eaten was previously frozen solid. If you find this unsavory, consider the alternative — a colony of worms in your gut.

1. Bacteria. Plot twist: The major risk of bacterial infection from a plate of sushi comes from the rice, not the fish. Rice doesn’t get much attention as a food safety hazard, but it can fuck you up.

The main culprit is called B. Cereus (pronounced, no joke as “Be Serious”). This bacteria is pretty much everywhere and thrives in — you guessed it — cooked rice. It produces a toxin which delivers “mild” food poisoning symptoms—typical vom vom stuff. The sickness usually disappears in a day or so, which means that food poisoning from B. Cereus is probably under-reported and more prevalent than we realize. 

But sushi has a defense mechanism against B. Cereus — sushi rice. It wasn’t until I managed a small sushi factory** that I realized sushi rice is not plain white rice. Sushi rice contains a bunch of sugar and vinegar which not only tastes delicious but is conveniently (deliberately?) way safer, because the vinegar increases the acidity of the rice enough that B. Cereus can’t grow.  

Practice safe sushi

This is such a critical safeguard that sushi producers who stock the supermarkets are legally required to keep records showing that they added the right amount of vinegar to the rice.

But do they actually follow the sushi law? Based on my experiences, I’d bet that the production records are woefully incomplete but that the sushi is prepared safely. This is one of those instances where culinary preferences and food safety priorities align: the tastiest recipe for sushi rice is conveniently the safest one. 

So what role does the supermarket play in the distinct sketchiness of supermarket sushi? Probably none. The fact that the sushi was made off site translates to a vaguely higher food-safety risk:  your lunch traveled across town on a truck and hung out in a few chill-ass fridges on its journey toward your gullet. More steps in the supply chain means more opportunities for mishandling — as opposed to sushi made in front of your eyes at a sushi bar. 

But I can’t really condemn supermarket sushi categorically. I eat it.

*Specifically, the tapeworm Diphyllobothrium and the round worm Eustrongylides.

**Here’s a fun Anthony Bourdain-style tidbit I learned from that gig — the spicy tuna roll is the sushi equivalent of the soup of the day. In other words, that divine sushi roll with its globular, pink filling is really a medley of scraps. The choice pieces of tuna go into the regular tuna rolls. The mangled edge pieces are combined in with mayo and siracha and — voila — spicy tuna filling. For the record, it’s totally safe and I truly appreciate this kind of culinary shrewdness. I still order spicy tuna rolls.

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On old coffee

If I leave coffee in the coffee-maker for two days and forget about it, can I drink the coffee on day three or has it “gone bad”?

I drink three day old coffee all of the time. It happens like this: I arrive at the office on Monday morning and bolt for the coffee machine. I  decant a mug of room temperature coffee and think, “Man, someone got started early this morning.” As I walk around the empty office trying to figure out who brewed coffee at 6am on a Monday, I realize that I am the only person at the office and that I am in fact drinking Friday’s coffee. Then I return to the coffee machine, and pour myself a second cup.

Coffee is an extremely safe beverage to consume because the act of preparing it — pouring boiling water on the grounds — sanitizes the coffee grounds as well as the vessel that it is being poured into. 

The FDA has a special category for foods like coffee and tea whose preparation inherently eliminates the major causes of food poisoning. Basically, the FDA lets these companies slack off on their food safety measures because they know you, the consumer, are gonna take care of it for them. Here’s what I mean:

Let’s say your teabag was assembled by a pair of dirty hands at the plant. It wouldn’t even matter because the boiling water you pour on it will instantly kill any bacteria and render it safe to eat. Pretty cool right?

So, your old coffee. You can be fairly certain that your coffee machine is clean because it gets routinely sanitized with boiling water. And the coffee started out clean because it was boiling. How could it have “gone bad?”

Here’s how I think about it:

In order for the coffee to “go bad” it would have been contaminated by some sort of bacteria between when it was brewed and day 3. This is unlikely if the coffee was covered with a lid.

 Even if the right bacteria were somehow introduced, it would need to reproduce prolifically before making you sick . But here’s the thing about coffee — it’s not very nutritious. This means a standard cup of black joe wouldn’t have the nutrients in it to support rapid bacteria growth.

If your coffee is truly infested with bacteria then will probably look and smell different. 

No visible alien activity? Then your coffee is fine to drink. 

Lastly, If you wanna be extra careful then just reheat it until it’s piping hot.  This will not only sanitize your java but it might also revive some flavor.

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