Food safety in elementary school

[needscoffee]

@Johnny_L.A

Typically, the lunches comprised a sandwich, a bag of chips, and often a cookie or even a Hostess snack for dessert. The sandwiches could be anything, but were often bologna (my usual), egg salad, tuna salad, or lunchmeat. The lunch boxes were kept in a cupboard at the back of the classroom, where they sat until lunchtime. As far as I know, none of us ever got sick from eating perishable food that had been in a not-particularly-cool cupboard for four hours.

Idk what you think is going to turn bad after 4 hours. It’s still cold from home for some, or most, of those hours. Lunch meat is highly preserved. PB doesn’t need refrigeration. The jarred mayonnaise in egg salad actually helps to preserve it a bit, and the jarred mayo itself doesn’t need refrigeration for moderate periods of time. Until not that many years ago, mayo jars didn’t even advise refrigerating after opening. Eggs spoiling in a very short time is more a concern with raw unshelled eggs than it is for cooked eggs

@Johnny_L.A

Empirically, it seems like four hours is not too long to store perishable lunches outside of a refrigerator in a Mediterranean climate.

Presumably people know to either use an insulated lunch bag or not bring highly perishable foods in a Mediterranean climate.