Other people's cooking makes me feel sick

[TheLuckyMoose]

Okay, so I already know I am BU in some ways. I’m just not sure how others cope?

Other people’s food hygiene standards make me feel sick. Whether it’s my brother cooking with a sweaty forehead, whether it’s people touching the food when I know they haven’t washed their hands. Or it could be someone talking over the food they are making and I’m sure saliva is getting into the food.

Recently I have been at a friends house and she doesn’t rinse the debris off the plates before washing them. So the basin water ends up full of stuff and that water is subsequently used to clean more dishes.

I also have a friend who literally licks her fingers whilst cooking.

I wondered if I have OCD, but my fear is not of getting ill, it’s more that I feel sick eating the food given to me when people just aren’t hygienic enough in my opinion.

I know this post sounds awful, please be gentle with me. I have had issues with this since I was little, but I’m just noticing more and more people doing unhygienic things whilst preparing meals and it’s making my life difficult.

No one tell the OP about how it's necessary for a good chef to taste their food as they cook.
They don't dunk the spoon back in after tasting, I learned that in home economics, basic kitchen hygiene.

Okay, so the friend that licks her fingers… she does this when preparing sandwiches and other cold foods. So, it’s not like licking fingers when baking but then using the utensil.

That’s a bit different tho… to a long curly hair in ya food. I love dogs. I also have two dogs.

All the "high alert" posters who stress over and desire unrealistic sterile conditions and think they don't have a problem realise that

stress kills too.

You know that right?? Spending a lifetime getting stressed with OCD tendencies will make you sicker than someone who washed a dish in 49 degree water not 50.

I know I have a problem.
I eat to live.
I don't like to think that there is body fluid in my food.
I like to prepare my own food, or to eat food prepared in places with hygiene standards, restaurants etc.

I’m like you op and I don’t regard it as problematic. It’s just other people are mingers.

Unwashed hands, poorly washed up stuff or animals around the kitchen ugh. I hate the thought that people have dried their hands or plates on unsanitary towels or drying up cloths. Lots of people wash at low temperatures that don't kill bacteria or fungus spores and use those rank smelling laundry things to hide smells.

It’s all disgusting. Unfortunately the friends I know who are scrupulous, and I’d be happy to eat at their house, aren’t very good at cooking. So I just don’t bother. Stick to my own standards.

I know someone who is germphobic and
I thought they were a minority ...until I joined MN...then I question whether I am a minority that I never give a thought to people's kitchen when presented with a home made cake (I'm more likely to refuse thinking about calories than for any hygeine reasons) Home made food (especially cakes) is 100 times nicer than shop bought.

I think I'm pretty hygienic I wash hands when I come inside, before and during preparing food, I wipe surfaces before food prep, know how to store food correctly etc....but I do wash up in a washing up bowl (I didn't realise this was problematic until MN) and I use our own cutlery to serve the cats food...so....maybe not...

But I do notice that it happens a lot on MN that people think they are different to others eg school mums couldn't be like me, baby group mums won't be like me, everyone else must have disgusting kitchens...apart from me etc etc

Food poisoning from home cooking is pretty rare and when it happens, it's associated with very specific foods and practices (undercooking chicken for example).

I can't imagine living like this, how joyless. I'd advise some therapy.

The competitive cleanliness obsession on here is super weird,

@AlpacaMittens

it is absolutely disgusting though, who wants her spitty fingers touching their food??

You can't eliminate germs. It's simply not possible. Even if you lived in a hermetically sealed bubble, washed everything at 100 degrees and bleached the hell out of everything every day. You still wouldn't come close to keeping things sterile.

There are certain things which are important in food hygiene: handwashing is one. The temperature at which food (particularly meat) is stored. Keeping meat and vegetable surfaces separate. Properly cleaning utensils and using food which has been left out overnight. Failing to do this really can make you sick.

I'm mega cautious about preparing meat and seafood and will chuck stuff out if I think there's even a hint its past sell-by. These can give you bacteria which will make you really ill.

But expecting people not to talk when preparing food because a micro-droplet of saliva might make its way into a dish serves no purpose at all. You're just as likely to get sick from droplets in the air.

A lot of this hyper anxiety is not based in scientific reality but it's making people more unwell worrying about it. Why not try to treat the root problem rather than creating additional layers of neurosis which you don't have a hope of trying to fix?

I eat pretty much anything, anywhere - restaurants, food trucks, BBQs, dinner parties, sandwich shops…… If it looks clean, I’ll eat it. During my very long life I’ve been ill as a result of contaminated food precisely 3 times, 2 of which were unexpected: a high end restaurant, and a family-style restaurant that came recommended by friends. The only one I could kick myself for was the doner kebab from a food truck in Germany.

In my own kitchen I am very clean, but not obsessively so. No one has ever been ill after eating my food, AFAIK.

All these people who throw away gifted food - I just think it’s a bit sad. Someone has gone to some effort to make something which they think you will like - I mean, what are the risks, realistically…

I can relate to this. Any time people have made cakes at work, i’ll politely take one and then bin it when no one is looking. They’ve also had pot luck lunches when everyone makes a dish and brings it in. I was literally retching at the thought of eating 22 year old who lived in a shared house with 4 other lads re-heated lasagne. I have to know and have seen the house it’s come from, some people just don’t seem to care though.

You have a mental health condition. You’re not “crazy”, but your behaviour is not normal. I’m sure it’s very common and easily treated by a professional.

Unfortunately most people who post on MN are either ignorant or unsympathetic of neurodivergent people and will blame them: “snap out of it”, etc. Particularly if the person exhibiting the strange behaviour is a man.

have you ever kissed anyone OP? Or had sex? Exchanging bodily fluids happens in life. It’s not “disgusting”.

I think you might just have minging mates.

My (late) mum was very hygienic and I could always eat her food without worry, except for one thing. When she cut a sandwich in two she would leave her finger indents in the sandwich and it would really put me off. 🫤

Yes but you wouldn’t want those fluids on your plate. A time and a place and all that.

You’re not being unreasonable at all! Food hygiene is important and I feel the ick- kitchen should be clean, hair tied up hands washed etc!

My DS is like an inspector when I prepare his sandwiches, looking for finger prints.
He's food sensitive too.

I cannot eat spaghetti because it reminds me of worms, I cannot eat raisins as they look blue bottle flies, I cannot eat white rice as it reminds of fish bait, I'm sure there are other food items that my brain rejected.

DD recently commented on my breakfast, that the mushrooms looked like slugs. I couldn't finish my pub breakfast.

I stopped eating potatoes as a child because worms in the earth. I grew out of that one.

I can't eat sausage as i visualise the bits of penis in it.

I’m very well aware of that and I’m happy to take my chances with say the odd unwashed blackberry off a bush when I’m out for a walk or normal human activity around food!

It’s the complete lack of attention to basic food and utensil hygiene that bothers me. And a cavalier attitude with pets.

I’m veggie too, so if people don’t separate meat (or meat products), and the utensils, I find that slovenly. The amount of buffets or catering in hotels I see where they just bung ham and tuna on the same platter and dripping on to the supposed veggie stuff is unreal.

The level of defensiveness and incredulity on these threads leads me to think people just don’t know, and aren’t taught this stuff. Food poisoning isn’t an every day occurrence, sure. But doesn’t it feel better to know your food has been prepared as carefully and hygienically as possible? I mean someone up thread gloating about the big black dog hairs in her kitchen? Come on. That’s fucking gross by any standard.

Sweaty forehead and talking over food wouldn’t bother me.

Licking fingers? Is she then touching the food again? If so, that’s a bit gross.

Not washing hands also grim but I figure I wont die.

The washing up - again, quite grim but I would let it pass but maybe offer to do some washing up as they go along so I can refresh the bowl. Always prefer a kitchen with a dishwasher.

I absolutely loathe people who let cats get anywhere near food prep areas - bum holes on worktops gives me the boak. I wouldn’t eat there.

I also don’t approve of dogs licking human plates etc as most dishwashers only heat to around 65-70c which isn’t hot enough to kill their bacteria. And washing by hand certainly isn’t hot enough. I stopped having cuppas with a neighbour when she let her dog “finish” her cup of tea.

(I have a much loved dog by the way, but he doesn’t get near human dishes. He has his own bowl which needs washed daily).

I would never have been bothered when I was younger. I ate dodgy food in dodgy places and didn’t care. It’s only in the last few years I’ve got more twitchy about this kind of stuff.

I don't think you're being unreasonable but I know I can be a little obsessive. I caught a stomach bug a few years ago and it triggered a gluten, onion, and garlic intolerance and eating is so fraught nowadays, even though I try to be relaxed. I just can't help but think if everyone was as clean as me, I'd still be able to eat bread!!! I'm prone to post viral illness too and immune compromised, so I get sick even when nobody else does. It's difficult to toe the line between being careful and being obsessive. Thankfully my husband and I are good cooks and we hate spending money, so we love to cook together at home anyway.

Food poisoning isn’t an every day occurrence, sure. But doesn’t it feel better to know your food has been prepared as carefully and hygienically as possible?

To a reasonable standard, but what you've said here seems unnecessarily pressurised. I love cooking and eating, I'm not going to get worked up about the highest hygiene standards possible. There's never been any food poisoning in my house.

Food poisoning isn’t an every day occurrence, sure. But doesn’t it feel better to know your food has been prepared as carefully and hygienically as possible?

Not really, no. What feels good is kniwing I have an immune system that protects me without things needing to be sterile. In fact, it presumably works because it's used to things not being sterile.

'Not an everyday occurrence' is a very, VERY long way from 3 times in 53 years, which is how often I've had food poisoning (and never from my kitchen, or any other domestic kitchen, or even from school bake sales - only from shellfish which was probably dodgy to start with, rather than prepared unhygienically).