TOT: food hygiene

A lot of people totally and utterly fail to grasp food safety. And frankly that's their look out.

You always need to bear in mind that whilst food cooking/preparation techniques will render the ingredient free of live bacteria. It will not remove the toxins that said bacteria produce either as a result of their lifecycle or (quite often) as a result of their being killed by cooking.

There was a "Bang Goes The Theory" years ago that demonstrated this so clearly, it permanently affected out kitchen practices.

I may have to plead guilty to paragraph 1.

Are you saying that 'to the boil and through the boil' is a failed theory?

On it's own. Yes.

No amount of boiling will remove the toxins some bacteria produce. Which is why it's better not to allow them to spread in the first place.

When you preapre your own food - from scratch - you are fairly safe. Because nature works and you will smell and taste anything too bad before it has a chance to kill you.

When you have no input into the preparation, you have no idea what other people may have done to disguise or remove the natural tell tale signs of danger.

Of course this means to stay safe you need a regulatory system you can have faith in.

I am perplexed by your story. You are saying that on 9 February you managed to buy soup with a use by date of 8 February. You say this was a major supermarket, and they are quite careful about use by dates.

They are usually very good at removing OOD stock, but sometimes customers pick up newer stock from the back, decide they don't want it, and put it back in front, pushing the old stock further back, where it remains hidden until it passes its use-by date. With hundreds of metres of shelving in the refrigerated sections of larger supermarkets, they can't check it all. On the very rare occasion I've found OOD food, I find an assistant and point it out to them. They're always very grateful and remove it immediately.

Hmmm, out local Morrisons before Christmas went all out installing (physically) hundreds of tiny video cameras, one on each shelf, whether to judge customer habits, aid Amazon packers, record pilfering or could be watch customers rearranging the stock?

Then in the next few days, a good many of them got removed. I think they got fed up of being questioned about it.

Well, according to the Focal website:

"Next-Gen Shelf Intelligence Focal’s AI-powered cameras give retailers real-time shelf visibility, optimizing availability, reducing shrink, streamlining inventory management, and boosting workforce efficiency."

I couldn't see anything about expiry/use by dates. Not so much "spy in the sky" as "spy on the shelf"!

Maybe.

It's the same creepy feeling ye have walking through the airport 'nothing to declare' channel in customs, that I had walking through that store. Thousand eyes and all that :~)

Next, ye'll approach the shelf. The AI assisted camera sees ya, and the e-Ink price display changes, either -5% or +20%.

Can I send a drone into a supermarket to do my shopping for me?

Adrian Caspersz wrote: ... snipped

... snipped So it's not just me who feels terribly guilty when walking through customs ;-)

I always manage to look bored and exhausted...works every time ]

Some years ago, I did a day's work in Antwerp, for which I needed a couple of A4 sheets of information in a briefcase. I arrived back in England off the ferry about midnight, and was stopped by a customs woman. After about twenty minutes she had to let me pass, but she was obviously convinced I was up to something.

There were about half a dozen customs people in a large hall, and about a dozen foot passengers. Clearly that's a favourite time for smugglers.

Also some years ago, by coincidence I made two channel crossings within a few days of each other, one business, one personal; same car different ports. On my return from the second trip customs pretty well disassembled my car, certain they would discover something.

And I wasn't certain that they wouldn't. This was the business trip and during the journey I discovered that the name by which I knew one of my colleagues wasn't the one in his passport.

Nick

I looked today and all the cartons were in date and in order. I was told there are no recalls on this product and no recorded complaints. The supervisor said that they are very careful about dates and check regularly but on occasions mistakes can happen. I conceded that I too made a mistake in not checking the date. We settled on a full refund.

My grandfather was Danish and had a friend in Denmark called Niels Thing. His friend's daugher was called Fanny. The daughter turned up at Prestwick airport with her passport showing her name as ... My grandfather (who was Royal Danish Consul at the time) had to drive to Prestwick to authenticate the passport and identify the holder.

Or they got nicked? Alternatively, perhaps they were moved to another store to compare & contrast punter behaviour in different locations.

On Sat, 14 Feb 2026 12:16:43 -0000 (UTC), Jethro <jethro snipped-for-privacy@hotmailbin.com wrote: [snip]

I was just thinking about this? How does sterilisation work then - or even an autoclave?

It kills the bacteria (and their spores - usually - there are some spores which are highly resistant to heat) which produce the toxins. If the toxins are proteins they are usually denatured by heat.

Note that spores of Geobacillus stearothermophilus (a bacterium which grows in hot springs) are used to test the effectiveness of autoclaving. They are extremely heat resistant, withstanding 121°C for up to 12 min.

There is another class of organism which is even more heat resistant, and has proved useful. You can bore yourself here:

"In industry, amylases, galactosidases and pullulanases in other species of Pyrococcus that function at over 100 °C (212 °F) allow food processing at high temperatures..."

I have had to point out to one supermarket manager that the complete stock of coleslaw had the previous days date. We then had to go to a different supermarket to purchase some.