Growing up in an immigrant family and having lived in Spain a spell, I've come to realize Americans are much too paranoid when it comes to food safety.
On the contrary, Americans come from a culture where food purveyors will happily kill you for a quick buck. American food safety is highly regulated because the American business model makes that necessary.
Some of this might be due to the influence of big ag on our education, media and regulatory systems. These measures definitely benefit the big factories and impose excessive burdens on the small local farms.
The fact of the matter is that yes, all things being equal, things like actually cooking food or not leaving things out at ambient temperature make it safer to eat.
The problem with food science is that you can have terrible food hygiene and still survive for a long time! This sort of stuff doesn’t instantly kill you
> * About 100,000 individuals were exposed and clinical disease occurred in 20,000 people, 10,000 of whom were hospitalized, according to Science Direct website. More than 300 victims died and many more were left with chronic disease, Science Direct said.
> * According to the survivors' organisation Seguimos Viviendo more than 5,000 people have died over the years and there are 20,000 surviving victims with poor quality of life and incurable afflictions.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/fake-olive-oil-scandal-...
"I survived, so it must be safe" is not a good argument.
The most important factor by far is aging. There's a reason why the French have a special name for the special job of aging cheese, "affineur". A good affinage can transform the most mediocre cheese into a culinary tour de force.
Source: I make cheese and age it myself.
Second, whether good bacteria will outnumber the "bad" depends on how many of each ... goodness value? there were at the start. If your raw milk is contaminated with sufficiently high numbers of coliform bacteria (E coli and friends) there is no amount of bacterial goodness that can make that milk good for cheesemaking. Most likely you're looking at "early blowing" (literally the cheese blowing up like a rugby ball, with a great big fissure in its center, because of gasses released by bacteria early in its maturation).
Third, some "good" and "bad" bacteria can coexist quite happily with each other simply because they do not consume the same resources and so do not compete for them.
Don't have a fourth one for you.
I remember an American colleague of mine absolutely freaking out that I was slicing up chicken without wearing gloves, and he was convinced that I'd be dead by morning from some hideous chicken-borne disease because of it. Apparently chicken in the US really is that dangerous, or something, but I guess someone from the US can comment?
Most Americans aren't like that person.
> Apparently chicken in the US really is that dangerous
Not to my knowledge. On the other (ungloved) hand, I don't know of any culinary tradition involving eating raw chicken.
Funny thing is that all those signs were next to actually healthy food ! Nothing next to the massively processed food that make up 90% of the shop.
That said, I don't think there have been egg related deaths since a raw egg eating competition years ago.
And generally, most of the sour family, and their descendents the fizzes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sour_(cocktail)
Egg whites add a nice... balance and mouthfeel to the cocktail that you don't really get from other ingredients.
For the yolks, flips are the big family (think nog without cream). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_(cocktail)
You can also save the yolks and make zabaione without being wasteful. Heavenly decadent on fresh fruit and easy to whip up after dinner. Also a great wow if you've got leftover champagne, as the carbonation isn't particularly important. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabaione
I usually split an egg and store the unused portion (whites or yolks) in the fridge 24 hours and use them the next day.
I guess it also helps there is a cultural aversion to eating raw food compared to the Europe and Asia.
As far as I’ve seen, all the American sterilization obsession is pushed onto the industry, not in the kitchen itself — e.g. you cannot find anything “dangerous” in most grocery stores / restaurants in the first place. The closest is steak and sashimi
Having said that, I don't know of anyone who uses gloves when handling chicken. Just wash your hands and you'll be fine. Then again, this person may have known someone who died from a staph infection. As long as you're not handling raw chicken while having an open cut on your hands or fingers (gross!) then you should be fine. Still, wash up when you're done!
I've been cooking in America for decades and have never once had an issue with cooking chicken and not wearing gloves. My mother, other the other hand, got an eye infection the day after getting a bit of raw liquid in her eye while she was cutting chicken a few months ago. A few antibiotics and eye drops, and it cleared up.
The only absurd precaution I've seen someone take in the US is that my grandmother would overcook pork to the point we would joke that it would shatter if you dropped it- however, she grew up in times when trichinosis was a very valid concern. Nowadays, it is safe to cook less than well done (some prefer medium or mid-well) though I don't know anyone willing to try it.
Fairly common in Texas.
This was one of the big controversies about Brexit, that they would be receiving chlorinated chicken from America when previously they were able to enjoy non-chlorinated chicken.
That said, even with salmonella bacteria, just wash your hands after preparing it and you'll be fine.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E9%B3%A5%E5%88%BA%E3%81%97&...
it's good.
[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/benschrager/status/14256753783711...
Other common raw meats include sushi, poke, sashimi, steak tartar, yukhoe (double whammy, raw beef + raw egg)
the #1 source of food poisoning is the norovirus via bad veggies by a literal order of magnitude over anything else. Guess I'd better stop eating salad and putting uncooked veggies in my sandwich
To your point about uncooked vegetables... the fact that that is what is left standing is a testament to us cooking meat and practicing proper food safety! I'm sure that stat would change quite quickly if people were having chicken sashimi more often.
Disclaimer: I eat sashimi quite often (steak tartar... sometimes. There are definitely restaurants I trust less to do that safely). Just also think it's important to conceptualize the size of the dice roll for various foods.
I have seen it in restaurants but that's more to keep the food from being contaminated by hands, not the other way around.
It's analogous to the process of cooking the duck, not the process of hanging it out overnight.