to feel like throwing up whenever I have to eat other people's home cooked food

[gettngbetter]

A lady in work baked a cake the other day and brought it in to share around. I accepted a slice as not to seem rude and said I'd have it later with my lunch as I'd just eaten. Then when no one was looking I wrapped it in a napkin and threw it in the bin.

I don't know why exactly but eating something that someone baked at home makes me feel ill. How do I know how hygienic they are? I'm not overly obsessed with hygiene or germs but i dont like the thought of someone I dont know very well touching the food with their hands.

If I'm in a restaurant I have no problem eating anything - even though if I think about it rationally the chef there could be very unhygienic! I've read horror stories about restaurants having to be shut down because they were endangering people's health.

Sometimes I'm in a situation where I feel obliged to accept and eat something - and there's no way of disposing of it - I try to gulp it down as quickly as possible.

I admit it's a bit weird to feel like this - Does anyone have the same issues. Or does anyone else have similar weird phobias? My friend is totally freaked out by cotton wool (I find that weird!)

Gosh, I'd eat home-baked cake over shop-bought pretty much every time... almost all shop cakes are repulsively sweet and full of nasty additives, so they have that slightly tinny taste.

I am the opposite of a hygiene freak, though, and don't worry about anything apart from meat/fish that has been left out in the warm too long.

Thinking about this with my armchair psychologist hat on, it looks to me to be about being unable to forget or ignore the hands and bodies etc that have preceded you in touching this food item in certain situations.

It's harder to ignore that someone else made, breathed on and handled this when it is home made and is brought in a Tupperware box from a home kitchen. It's easier to ignore it in a restaurant, when you don't know or see most of the people handling your food, and it's presented in a standardised and formal way.

It's like people who will happily eat chicken nuggets in a bag from the supermarket but who would gag at a rare steak/ killing their own meat/ doing anything that makes them think about the animal and slaughter process.

I had a friend who worked in a well known cake factory.

You don't want me to tell you, do you...?

Yes, you are.

That's a shame OP.

I hope she didn't spot it in the bin though.

You have an immune system and it likes a workout.

Please get a grip and FFS do not put cake in the bin! That is wrong, wrong, wrong!

Wow! I can't believe how many people prefer shop-bought than homemade baked stuff!!

Shop-bought cakes don't taste right, they have the wrong texture, they're full of preservatives and the sugar doesn't carmelise the way it should...

I think it's sad that so many people's irrational fear of germs means they eat processed stuff rather than pure home baking

Cory, tell us about the well-known cake factory. Does Mr Kipling not wash his hands when he goes for a pee???

prepares to be horrified

We are living in a society where - increasingly - low paid workers are having to go to food banks for charitable handouts, as a result of the rising cost of essential items.

There are plenty of people who just can't afford to have these sorts of 'fears', around perfectly good food.

Also while it is perfectly sensible to take hygiene precautions in relation to certain foodstuffs - e.g. making sure chicken is properly cooked - cake is not exactly a high-risk foodstuff.

I think you are being a tad precious.

However, when we did a everyone bring in a dish lunch at work, I have to admit avoiding the sandwiches made by one particular colleague. I once looked after her cats when she was on holiday and went into her house daily to feed them. I couldn't believe the state of the place; car crap everywhere, cat litter everywhere, it was Kim and Aggie style filthy.

Home baked is sooooooooooooooooo much nicer than shop bought over-sweet-full-of-air-and-additives-to-keep-it-fresh-for-a-month crap....

I have waitressed in a "posh" restaurant too - much rather have home made than eat out... MUCH rather......

it was the day the "kitchen boy" used a teatowel to wipe round the bin before the big pots that made me leave (and heave!!! - lunch was free)

Go back packing around Asia, when you get back, you will no longer find anything a challenge to eat.

In the mean time, stop wasting food, politely say no, or tell people you have issues with food, so they don't waste time, energy, and money making you any.

I haven't done restaurants in years thanks to various docu-horrors. Never did kids birthday cakes either due to saliva factor and only do buffets when I've either elbowed everyone out of the way so I'm first in the queue or can carefully choose from the dishes at the back as they're less likely to have been snorked and snotted over.

Am adding other people's home-cooked food to the list as I type

I'm relatively new to Mumsnet. It may be that I'm just looking at a small selection of threads by a small selection of posters.

But there seems to be a huge fear of contamination. Via this board I have learned about a widespread fear of public toilets with lots of hovering above seats going on. Many people are convinced that unless everyone removes shoes on entering a home, then major pollution is taking place. And now there seems to be a widespread sense that it is dangerous to eat any food unless it is factory-processed or made by the poster herself.

The world seems to be a very very scary place. It must be quite hard to bring up healthy confident children when feeling so scared.

(My mother has some obsessions around cleaning, which made my childhood home a rather tense and uncomfortable environment. This might be why these threads make me feel rather sad.)

MadeofStarDust, surely it depends who's doing the baking?

I've had amazing cakes from supermarkets. Fiona Cairns for Waitrose are utterly delicious. There's no way you could make better

Yabvvvu.
If you don't want it, just say no. Throwing food into the bin as just stupid and wasteful.
"No thank you. I'm fasting/coeliac/off sugar/don't like cake" would be a much nicer and less wasteful response.

Home baked is sooooooooooooooooo much nicer than shop bought over-sweet-full-of-air-and-additives-to-keep-it-fresh-for-a-month crap

If properly baked not by my SIL.

Cory tell tell tell!!!

OP - yes you're irrational and a bit odd ... haven't you heard about people spitting in food/drinks in restaurants and cafes??? But I'm sure you'd find me odd!

I'd much rather have home made than shop bought processed artificial rubbish. I'm not obsessive at all about that kind of stuff ... don't hover on toilet seats, have a dog, let the DCs eat food if they drop it on the floor (not only if they drop it on the floor ... I mean I don't make them bin it!) ... but I do wash hands after going to the loo and before cooking. We all have good consitution and aren't ill often. Good friend is mental about it and her kids are always ill. Could be coincidence, but a doctor once told me that if a person is in a too clean environment and doesn't get germs for their immune system to fight, it starts to attack itself hence auto-immune diseases.

cory come back and tell us. Shop bought cakes have been made by someone... not a robot. Maybe a 'someone' who didn't wash their hands and forgot to put their very thin blue gloves on. I would much rather eat something made in a home kitchen than anything made in a big factory. I've seen pics of factories that make sandwiches, pies, ready meals etc and honestly, I bet at least one of the people on the production line had picked their nose, scratched their ear, had a cold, or wafted a stray hair into the mix!

Plus as my grandmother used to say, 'You have to eat a peck of dirt'. There's nothing wrong with the odd well-behaved germ here and there.

I can't eat other people's fruit.

OP thank you for posting this. I can't eat other people's food at work either. There are always cakes doing the rounds, I take a piece put it in kitchen towel in my drawer 'for later' and then dispose of it. I realise this is a waste, but at work you need to be tactful and considerate of other people's feelings.

When you work closely with people you really get to know their hygiene standards or lack of them

I'm the same as you OP.
I think it is because eating someone else's food is so intimate somehow, but that isn't enough of an explanation for how revolted I feel. It is nothing to do with germs either and I have worked in a cake factory so I know what goes on.

a doctor once told me that if a person is in a too clean environment and doesn't get germs for their immune system to fight, it starts to attack itself hence auto-immune diseases.

I have also heard that given as an explanation for the rise in asthma, allergies etc

Stuff we can't do so much about - for example the additives in petrol which are in the air we breathe - may be doing us a lot more harm than some home-baked biscuit from a kitchen which hasn't been doused in Dettol.

So many people with forms of cibophobia! Amazing.