Would you be grossed out by homemade baked good in care package?

Have you never considered for yourself now you are an adult that your mother might be wrong?

At my son's wedding the entire dessert course was home made by the guests - about 20(?) different people were asked to make something.

I think it's weird to not eat home made food. Most food is home made, surely?

My understanding is that baked goods are among the least risky when it comes to food poisoning anyway.

If people are going to get sick from home made food, it'll be things like shellfish and meat not cooked properly. Not butter, flour and sugar.

Someone will no doubt come along to say that what doesn't kill you might still make you very ill. But that's why it's not actually very smart to obsess over germs. My aunt is a hygiene freak and her kids used to get ill all the time because their immune systems weren't very robust. Meanwhile I grew up with a dad with absolutely no concept of food hygiene, who considered use by dates as the earliest date on which it was legal to eat something. We never, ever got food poisoning. My brother travelled round India with a group of students and was the only one who never got the runs.

It is weird. Here in the UK our immune systems used to have to cope with horrific levels of filth, back in the days before proper sewage systems and handwashing facilities, clean water piped into homes, no fridges, no environmental health inspections for shops and factories, and so on and so forth. Many people did die as a result of poor hygiene, but most didn't. We are made of much tougher stuff than the germphobes seem to think.

Agree. I’ve worked in offices where if homemade cakes are bought in most of the staff are virtually wrestling each other to the ground to get a slice!

I honestly don’t think I’ve met anyone in RL with the hygiene anxiety of MN posters.

No wonder people ended up disinfecting their shopping and wearing gloves to touch door handle in Covid if they stress out about a cake

I don’t eat home baked items unless I’ve been to the persons house, I know I probably wouldn’t get ill it’s just the thought of the potential germs/pet hair/dirty kitchen sponge that puts me off.

I honesly think this is only on MN. In real iife, I see many people sharing their food with others. Not just cake but everything.

Oh and at my wedding we had a cake buffet instead of just wedding cake, everything home made including the wedding cake which I made myself and decorated. (Rather proud of it) not a single complaint and everyone complimented on the quality! I arranged for a coeliac friend to make a suitable traybake to cater for the 2 gf guests we had plus her, and my dm was in charge of vegan offerings to cover the vegan plus two dairy allergies.

Of course it's fine, don't you buy from bake sales?

I mean, nothing is particularly hygienic. Do these people not touch door handles or library books or money either?

God, that's so sad. Your poor kids.

Will you really tell your children they're not allowed to eat the cake at a party?

Do you not think that the impact of this sort of behaviour might be slightly more damaging to your children than the possibility of them eating a piece of cake made by someone who touched their phone and then touched the wooden spoon without scrubbing their hands with Dettol for 30 seconds in between?

I am guessing those who would not like unwrapped homemade cookies have never worked in a factory then. if they had they'd realise fast that home made is likely more hygeinic lol
How about she allows guests to make their OWN minds up upon seeing the care package, rather than deciding for them. I suspect it's got more to do with the fear of being seen as "cheap" tbh pure snobbery not concerned about slobbery! lol

I agree with this post. I don't understand what's happened either. Why do people place their trust in multinationals to produce safe food, against all the evidence that multinationals are motivated entirely by profit and not at all by wanting to keep their customers healthy, but don't trust home bakers producing some of the lowest risk food around?

Totally! Great comparison.

I wonder what the % of having both fears is.

I am astonished that people wouldn't eat home made items. When did this become a thing? Back in the day everything was produced in a 'cottage industry' rather than a mass-produced site. It wouldn't cross my mind not to eat a home-made item!

I wouldn’t eat it, no. We are going to a kids party today, SIL gets a random school mum with no accreditation to bake the cake - we wont be eating that either.

Bake sale goods go in the bin too.

Not the least bit hyperbolic 😂

It's on a par with the assumption that anybody who rings the doorbell unannounced is an axe murderer. Must be very tiring going through life with that level of anxiety.

I'd eat them and I'd think it was lovely. I think also since you are known to the family your baking can be trusted! If you're only making 12 and the brides side will eat them then you have, say, 6 Brownies left where some people might eat them and others not (so let's say 9 people will eat Brownies and 3 won't) - so I'd do it!

If someone visibly dirty with obvious poor hygiene offered me a home made cake, I might say no.
However I find it strange that so many people's default presumption is that every kitchen that isn't their own is not fit for food preparation...like they are an anomaly that they can clean their kitchen and wash hands while preparing food...

It's an interesting point about bake sales and so on.

I think homemade cakes and biscuits are a huge part of British food culture. Perhaps the most significant part of it, because our food culture isn't great otherwise. My childhood (and my mother's, and my grandmother's before that) was full of bake sales for charity and stalls of homemade goods at the school Christmas fete. Our village used to (in fact still has) a village show every summer with maypole dancing and cake competitions and I used to love going into the cake tent to see the delicious things people had made, which would then go on sale once the judges had decided on the prizewinners. As a young adult (bearing in mind I'm not even 40 yet) lots of people inspired by GBBO would bring in home baked cakes to work and they would generally get devoured. I don't remember anybody being this germ-phobic (or if they were, they pretended they were on a diet and kept their thoughts to themselves).

If everybody felt the same way about this I think it would just about kill off one of the only really great things about our national food heritage.

I wouldn’t want to ruin my appetite for wedding banquet and goodies by snaffling brownie in my hotel bedroom.

each to their own

You would. I'd eat it and hope there were more!