In laws playing it fast and loose with refrigeration - who is right?

[spatchcock]

Went to stay with the in laws this weekend. Got up on Saturday morning and went to have some toast with jam. MIL points me towards the cupboard. In the cupboard there are four pots of jam - three are mouldy and one has just been opened. I cleared out the green jams and after using the unmouldy one went to put it back in the fridge but MIL says 'Oh no - it goes in the cupboard.' Right, ok... not going to argue, not my house or my jam.

At midday, FIL comes back with the shopping. Everything gets tidied away except for a joint of pork, which gets left on the side. A few hours later MIL and I are pottering about in the kitchen and I see the pork is still out and ask if I should put it away. "Oh I've got it, don't worry," MIL says. She puts it in the (unlit) oven in preparation for the Sunday roast.

I go to bed thinking about the pork, imagining the bacteria multiplying endlessly and wondering if any of it could possibly harm my incubating (31-week) PFB. My own mother is absolutely fastidious about refrigeration to the point of obsessive. A ten minute trip to the supermarket necessitates several chilly bins and a game plan. Bacteria is Satan and Mum is a missionary of hygiene. I thought I was nothing like her (I eat things off the floor), but something has obviously rubbed off on me because it takes me a while to get to sleep.

The next day the oven is turned on at midday - 24 unrefrigerated hours after the pork first made its appearance in the kitchen.

I ate it - MIL cooked the shit out of it so any bacteria (along with any nutrients) were probably killed off. MIL has also raised three strapping sons. One of them, my DP, says he can't remember any incidents of food poisoning, and that meat has always been treated this way in his house.

I find this bizarre. It seems completely abnormal to me to leave meat lying around for a whole day in warm spring temperatures but DP thinks I'm overreacting.

So who is being unreasonable? Me with my bacterial awareness or MIL with her germy breeding grounds?

No, I wouldn't, I'd probably throw it away. However, that's not my point. It won't kill you just because it's not chilled.

Every day, people in affluent countries throw away tonnes and tonnes of perfectly edible food. Every day, people in poor countries starve to death. Children survive from picking through rubbish dumps for food and scraps. So what if the pork sat out or the jam wasnt in the fridge?!

And every day poor people in those situations die from diarrhoea, it's a massive killer. It's ridiculous to suggest that because poor people in the world can't afford to practise good food hygiene there's no need for it!

In my mum's time jam and ketchup etc was packed with artificial preservatives. These days they're not, hence all the 'keep refridgerated after opening' stuff. So I do keep the ketchup in the fridge, but cold marmalade is not natural on hot toast, and the sugar does do a pretty good job still. It just doesn't last forever, like it used to in the 1970's.

I have never known ketchup to go off. Something to do with the vinegar and sugar (ie preservatives) I imagine....

and home-made jam never had artificial preservatives in it.

In my mum's time jam and ketchup etc was packed with artificial preservatives. These days they're not, hence all the 'keep refridgerated after opening' stuff.

Actually this isn't true. In your mum's time, jam and ketchup were full of sugar. It is the sugar that acts as the preservative, hence why jam/marmalade was kept quite happily in the cupboard/larder and not the fridge.

For the last 20 years or so, we have seen a move towards lower sugar foods - which is why they now say on the label to put them in the fridge once opened. And which is why they go mouldy more quickly.

And mould spores grow through food - if you scrape off the obvious green mould you're not actually removing the spores. For most people, eating these won't cause a problem. But if you suffer from certain conditions, such as thrush, this is a real danger.

It's not good food hygiene. It's over careful wasteful practice fostered by food producers and supermarkets, to convince sheeplike shoppers to buy more food. There is a happy medium. It's called using your brain!

There is no way I'd keep ketchup in the fridge. I do keep jam in there because I only have homemade jam and it goes mouldy if you open it if it's in the larder. It's a lot less to do with making people ill and a lot more about wasting good jam. I scrape green bits off philly and pesto. No one has died.

green bits off philly? Mine goes orange! Why is that, I wonder?

...still honking up at ......

I have seen my MIL eat cream cheese from a tub that had a thick black hairy beard growing from it, and when I did this shock she just tutted, and pushed to beardy bit to one side and said 'Oh alright, I'll just eat the bit on the other side of the pot then, if it'll stop you fretting.

OP, I refrigerate everything, major paranoid I'm afraid :)

The same reason the seals round your shower will go orange - it's a different kind of mould - but still mould.

Mitochondria - last time I bought a pre-cooked whole roast chicken it had a use-by date about 10 days out.

I don't think a cooked chicken being kept in your MIL's fridge for a week would be a problem.

I made soup last Friday with two roast chicken carcasses left over from Easter Sunday. I make that 12 days in the fridge before the stock-pot beckoned. Delicious it was, too.

Sniff test sorts all.

If suspect, I sniff it (after removing any mould present) if it smells OK I eat it.

In pregnancy this is especially efficient as I could have rented myself out to airports as a sniffer dog such was my sense of smell (made London busses a special kind of hell though).

This has stood me in good stead, am still alive and the only time I ever had food poisoning was overseas and I had a cold so sniff test was not possible.

I have known dogs to bury extra meat and come back to it days later once it had a bit of 'body' to it. These were all proper working dogs though so possibly tougher than your average pet.

YANBU - aged 21 i temped at the local environmental health office where i learnt that a LOT of people get nasty bugs from badly stored or poorly prepared food.
From my flat-sharing days and from using a shared fridge at work I know that lots of people eat long out of date food, and never cover their food up (in a public fridge!!) with cling film or a lid. Or they leave meat and rice out on the side for hours before reheating it.
My mum educated us well about food safety after nan gave her very bad food poisoning.

It's not good food hygiene. It's over careful wasteful practice fostered by food producers and supermarkets, to convince sheeplike shoppers to buy more food. There is a happy medium. It's called using your brain!

How is putting stuff in the fridge wasteful (surely the opposite if it lasts longer) or making supermarkets more money (again surely better for them if it doesn't last as long)?

OMG - I'm having heart failure at some of the stuff being said on here as I used to teach food hygiene and have a catering background.
Environmental Health Officers used to insist that any open jars had to have a sticky label with the date of opening on them then put in the fridge - Even things like Branston Pickle that seem to keep for years. I now put everything open like Ketchup and Jam in the fridge out of habit.

The differnce is that in catering you have to show due dilligence and that you have taken all reasonable steps to protect your patrons health and safety.
You can do what the hell you like in your own kitchen - even if its not a good idea.

Prize for the most patronising post I've seen in a long time goes to LRDTheFeministDragon.

OP - my late father had an employee (and his wife) who were hospitalised and almost died (and was off work for months) as the result of food poisoning from pork, so I would probably have refused to eat the pork that had been left in the oven for 24 hours. Seems utterly bizarre in a house in which refrigeration was available.

Sorry, it was out of order.

but people who wouldn't worry about the pork aren't suggesting food poisoning isn't real, just that 24 hours in a switched-off oven before cooking thoroughly isn't going to cause it.

Agree, Sybil. There aren't many bacteria that can survive a thorough heating to a high temperature.

I didn't think when I posted how it would come across to people who've had serious bad experiences with food poisoning. It's not likely to happen from this situation but I shouldn't have posted with that tone, it was twattish.

My parents treat meat like this. Once cooked it is kept on a plate in the microwave for two or three days till it has been eaten up.

Pretty much everything in the fridge is mouldy and or out of date.

I lived with them till I was 18 and survived so it can't be too bad! I do have an iron constitution though

I had never heard of people keeping jam, ketchup etc in the fridge till I left home. TBH I still find it a bit weird to put it in the fridge.

My MIL on the other hand refridgerates everything including loaves of bread

Another whose parent almost died from food poisoning, so I'd have refused the meat. I refridgerate most things, it makes financial sense for them to last longer surely?! And I like cold jam, ketchup, mayo, salad cream etc....

Jam is fine in the cupboard IF you don't stick a buttery knife in it. If you use a clean knife its fine.

• I dont think LRDTFD sounded patronising. What she said was the truth. *It is wasteful practice because people throw away stuff which hasn't been chilled when it "says it on the jar", or is past it's 'best before' date. "I can't eat that, it hasn't been in the fridge" "it's out of date". even though it's perfectly good food