# Can you personally tell whether buffet food is fresh by looking at it?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-personally-tell-whether-buffet-food-is-fresh-by-looking-at-it/945038>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Tags:** food-cooking\
**Created:** [June 26, 2021, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-personally-tell-whether-buffet-food-is-fresh-by-looking-at-it/945038 "2021-06-26T04:32:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![WolfpackJeep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpackjeep/32/2921_2.png) [@WolfpackJeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WolfpackJeep)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2021, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-personally-tell-whether-buffet-food-is-fresh-by-looking-at-it/945038/21 "2021-06-27T21:31:51Z")

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As others have mentioned upthread, some less-than-fresh buffet foods are easy to spot – dried/shrunken chicken, crusty rice, wilted veggies, and so on. In other cases such as a separated sauce, the food just doesn’t look good, so I really don’t care whether it’s been sitting a long time or not – I’m still not eating it.

Of course, one of the nicest looking chicken pot pies I’ve ever eaten gave me a three-day encounter with salmonella, so you definitely can’t tell by looking all the time.

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**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2021, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-personally-tell-whether-buffet-food-is-fresh-by-looking-at-it/945038/22 "2021-06-28T02:57:04Z")

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If you have to ask it’s not fresh.

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