I’ve never done that and I’m not about to start now. Maybe I’m getting too old for this place, or it’s changing, or something.
Us young folk are taking over!
While you and the site are growing old together :), I’m sure part of the problem is your specialized knowledge in food. I know Quadgop is more than a little peeved(as well he should be) with the medical questions and answers put on the board. Especially the answers. :eek:
The answer to most medical questions about a specific situation is always: talk to your doctor. Other comments about general information, shared experiences, anecdotes, antidotes, alternative medicines, snake oils, etc are potentially interesting, but not necessarily relevant to a specific case.
Similarly, I agree, the answer to a “Can I still eat this food?” question would be: if in doubt, throw it out. Other comments about general information, shared experiences, anecdotes, antidotes, the healthfulness of mold, etc are potentially interesting, but not necessarily relevant to a specific case.
Similarly, “My car is making a chunka-chunka noise, what should I do?” People can make very helpful suggestions, but they may not be relevant to the specific case. Similarly, “Which internet service is better for me?” or “Which insurance company policy is best for me?” or…
As TubaDiva says, we expect people to have some common sense. The medical and legal questions are the most problematic, and hence we’ve evolved special rules.
Personally, sometime in the '80s, I ate canned C-rats that were produced during WWII, that my father (who was in the US Air Farce in the '60s) had brought home, and kept “Lord-Knows-Where” for another 20+ years, and it didn’t kill me. Tasted halfway decent, actually. In other words, you CAN eat shit that was produced almost 50 years previously, and it might even taste OK, and not kill you.
Will it kill you? The proper question is “Did it kill you?” If the answer is “I didn’t try it, yet”, then the only proper response is “OK, Try it, and report back.” Some things will last forever, but others will kill you at 50+ years, and others will kill you at 50+ minutes. Everyone’s mileage will vary. It hasn’t been studied, because it cannot be studied, unless you design the experiments on 50+ year timescales. No one has the resources, nor the incentive, to do those experiments.
All you get when you ask questions like that are “competing anecdotes”. You can NEVER get accurate expert experimental data on it, for the simple reason that experiments like that to establish the “true value” cannot be, and so have not been, done.
Talk to your Nutritionist, and have that Mayo tested. There’s no other way to be sure, other than nuking it from orbit…
The only proper response to questions like this is “You eat it, and tell us what happens.” All other answers can only be “competing anecdotes”.
Is this an anecdote?
Not so. You can also get statements that are patently false, such as “If it smells OK, it’s safe to eat”. This is not an anecdote, it’s an assertion of a false rule.
I pulled a similar stunt with a can of WWII c-ration Lima Beans & Ham brought home by my Army Air Corps dad from the European Theater of Operations in ’45 and left, tantalizingly, in our pantry for many years thereafter. While it didn’t quite kill me, eating it wasn’t exactly one of my intellectual high marks. Perhaps we’d have elicited a North Vietnamese surrender had the U.S. Air Force thought to carpet bomb Hanoi with circa WWII cans of Lima Beans & Ham in lieu of conventional ordnance.
I feel this way about some Japan-related threads. I have lived here for 15 years, but don’t consider myself the only source of definitive, up-to-the-minute info on Japan. But some of the utter horseshit/ill-informed information/blatantly false stuff I come across boggles the mind. Admittedly, there is much less here than on other boards I’ve been on, and there are quality posts, too.
I know we are supposed to fight ignorance here. So while it would be easy to snark back “no, you’re wrong, my years and years here have shown me that…” I realize that this type of response would be obnoxious and subjective as well. To properly respond, I feel I’d have to go get cites etc. Otherwise I’m doing the same kind of posting that I’d be accusing others of.
So I tend to stay away from the Japan-related threads.
Hrm. I am sounding like an asshole here. Sorry! I guess what I’m trying to say is that I see this as my problem, and haven’t figured out a way to address it yet without sounding more like an asshole. Yes, that’s it.
I think Mangetout is right, what with people dropping dead all over the place from day old pizza.
As much as it is also a “fact,” yes. “Facts” are socially constructed. As a society, we have conventions specific to us by which we decide what to consider a “fact.” If these people who have published those assertions have performed the various acts that satisfy our collective notion of “facthood,” we then call it a “fact,” as opposed to an anecdote.
I read this as “My cat is making a chunka-chunka noise.” I thought everybody knew what that meant. :eek:
It means get that cat off your lap now.
Holy Guacamole…
I think my head just exploded reading this thread…
Should I seek Quadgop.…Mangetout or the “MelonDude” for advice…
need answer FAST.
:dubious:
Does the revised policy mean that Handy can come back?
FWIW, I used to be a food/industrial microbiologist. Don’t know much about medical micro, but a reasonable amount about food/industrial. So I can say quite authoritatively, there is only one predictable answer to “is this safe to eat?” And that is “It depends”.
I can tell you which foods in which situations I would choose not to eat, and if you or I get sick I can (or at least, used to be able to) tell from the symptoms and timing what you ate that made you sick and why, but predicting whether any individual food will make you sick this time is just a numbers game.
Oh, and one other thing - food that smells off is probably not good to eat, but food can look and smell just fine, and still make you sick enough that death looks like the easy option.
(eta)
And before I forget, contrary to what you may hear, cooking will not remove all bacterial toxins.