Oh, I wouldn't have been able to eat it! You did the right thing Jenny.

If In Doubt - Throw It Out seems applicable here, doesn't it!

I would have done same as you, Jenny.

/tricia

Depends on how loquacious the preacher was. If the sermon was reasonably short and the service a typical one hour, I'd have eaten it.

Keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold. The danger zone is 40-degrees F to 140-degrees. It's generally suggested to toss the food if it's been kept in the danger zone for 2 hours and if the temperature is between 90 and 140 then toss it after 1-hour. Having had food poisoning, it's something you really don't ever want to experience. It's always best to err on the side of safe rather than sorry.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Safe Food Handling

Depends how long it was in the car....I wouldn't have worried about if for an hour or perhaps 2 hours....but any longer and I would have tossed it too.
Reheating has nothing to with food spoiling....it's the length of time it is held under 140 and above 40 degrees.
However I think the directives for picnics and such say that 3 hours is the maximum at temps in the danger zone....unless you had a very long service it was probably fine.....even though dried out.

Well I wouldn't keep chicken in the car for anything longer than 15 minutes especially not for the length of time for a church service. Food poisoning is nothing to fool with

I agree that it would be OK at under 2 hours in the car, longer than that it would have been thrown away.

Annie

It all depends. There is no absolute guideline for all.

I have been to places where raw meat is out in the open in tropical wether all day long.

I have been to places where we eat food that starts to smell. They just wash the food with water and add more spices.

If you go to many Chinese stores, all the roasted ducks chickens pork are hung in room temperature all day long.

dcarch

The service was an hour long. It has been interesting to hear the differing opinions on this. I think it probably would have been just fine, but I do feel better playing it safe. It is sad to waste food, though, meat especially.

With my kids?? No way--out it would go. After all --who would be the parent to take off work if they were sick from it? :)
My H just visited family and told me that both his mother and his sister eat lunch meat until it "smells bad".
JUST YUCK

Until Grainlady posted above, I didn't know the two hour rule was reduced to one hour if temperatures are above 90 deg. Confirmed, and good to know.

Jenny, I, too, find the mixed reactions interesting. In particular because most of the time "would you still eat it" threads come up I get a little wigged out at what people consider "still ok." But I'd have eaten that chicken. Regardless, IMO if you want to be as safe as possible you should stick to established guidelines. Just because people get away with stretching the rules doesn't make it safe. Kind of like driving home after having a few cocktails. Obviously the vast majority of folks get home without incident.

Good point, FOAS. Noodles, you made me laugh :)

I'd have eaten it if less than an hour TOTAL time.
I wonder what the temp was at the store. Should have been over 140, but do you know?

Not sure I'd feed it to kids, their immune systems are less developed and I couldn't stand it if I made them sick.

Raw meat is different...........it's going to be cooked later in most cases. Cooked food is far riskier since all the "good" bacteria has been killed off allowing the baddies to grow at room temps.

I think you made a good call.
Deanna

Deanna....cooking doesn't kill all causes of food poisoning. Some organisms that make you sick form toxins....and those toxins aren't killed by cooking.
Staph aureus is one and Bacillius Cereus another...

As far as i know there is no difference in the safety of cooked and raw meet left too long at room temperature.

Here is a link that might be useful: one example of toxin

In this neck of the woods, lately, if you had
put RAW chicken in your car, it would have been
cooked to perfection, in an hour. As a matter
of fact, it may be overcooked, and a might too
crispy, for some.

I guess it is wise for the more professional of you to be careful. But for the rest of us: when lindac and I went to school, for at least eight years, every day everyone (ok slight exageration) had a tuna sandwich that was probably prepared before 7am, stored on a shelf and eaten at 12. I'm sure I and my genious (vast exageration) friends would have remembered if our classmates spent the afternoon in school barfing their brains out; and we all managed to stay alive many years beyond.

Sorry....I never took tuna or egg salad for that reason.....and I do remember kids suddenly afflicted with the "stomach flu" barfing their brains out.
But truth be told the mayo ion the salads protected it somewhat ( theoretically) from bacterial growth.
But my lunch was ham, swiss cheese on white bread....no mayo no butter, no mustard....for years on end....and for a short period, cottage cheese mixed with pineapple on wheat bread...but that was too messy.

When I first became the daughter in law, my FIL had a touchy stomach and couldn't eat onions, garlic or "rich foods....and always was sick the day after Thanksgiving. I discovered the likely reason, the turkey sat out on the "bench" until an evening snack of turkey sandwiches....with the stuffing in it...
The next year the new bride cooked thanksgiving dinner, and FIL decided it was my dressing that was why he didn't get sick....but of course I packaged up meat and refrigerated it and sent them home with that.

I sure remember those days Chas!
Walking to school, for the first few years, then riding the bus when we were older. Hot summer days with a square, metal lunch pail. Got to school and set it on a shelf, and a few hours later eagerly eating lunch.

One of my favourite sandwiches was a ham salad. Minced ham with mayonnaise and sweet relish.

Chas, I took the tuna salad and chicken salad, leftover roast beef or venison, that bologna salad with ground bologna/sweet relish/mayo. Ham or fried egg with mayo, whatever.

We got to school at 7:30 am and ate at noon. We had no lunchroom or cafeteria and the school was not air conditioned. Lunches sat in the back of the room on a shelf until lunch and I don't remember anyone ever getting sick and barfing at school except Rusty Wilson and it was because he ate a grasshopper on a double dog dare and threw up.

BUT.....someone somewhere might have, so if it makes you uncomfortable, don't do it.

FOAS, for the record, I've never had a couple of cocktails and driven anywhere, mostly because if I have two, I'm usually already barfing! (grin)

Annie

Sorry about Rusty but I think he deserved it.

I actually did the tuna lunch on a shelf or locker thing from first through 12th grade. Only half day sessions for kindergarden! I never got sick. I suppose it must happen but it must be unusual. We had 2000 students in high school and perhaps 200 or more in our grade school. I suppose If it was common, every week (or day) it would be 'clean up in room 12, back row'. I'll bet more teachers threw up running the mimeograph machine. Maybe its the strong constitutions of the young.

Lindac, I like your theory about the protective oil layer with the mayo, but that would bring into question the we're all gonna get sick from mayo thing that your mom must have believed. But I'll bet the dry repetitive sandwiches turned you into the wide ranging investigative cook you became. Say; for many years I have had the same thanksgiving dinner; have we met?

It's not the oil in the mayo....it's the vinegar...or lemon.
Mom thought we were all going to get sick from mayo because she made it of raw egg yolks.....and likely that would make you sick.
The reason I ate ham and cheese with no mayo nor butter was because I wanted to stay at a tiny little 98 pound majorette....yeah...LOL! But also most people I knew didn't take tuna salad sandwiches....the brown bags with a tuna sandwich really smelled nasty by noon.

The most recent suggestion for food left in a hot car -

â¦Never leave perishable food out of the refrigerator for more than two hours; depending upon the outside temperature, if food is left out at a picnic or in a hot car it may only remain safe for 30 minutes.

I wouldn't have eaten it. And I did take tuna, lunch meat to school in a lunch box, no blue ice available in those days. I don't think I'd do it now, I put a cooler (with the blue ice :)) in the back of the car to go to Costco an hour away. By the time it's been in my cart, then the drive home, just is longer than I want to leave milk, perishables.

Here is a link that might be useful: Consumer Guide Food Safety

I find posters' practices regarding food safety interesting too.

As a person who has had food poisoning (listeria) I'm ultra conservative.
As a mother who has watched her children positively retching in the hospital with cyclical vomiting, I'm ultra conservative.
As a wife who is married to a Type 1 diabetic, I'm ultra conservative.

I never look at it as food wasted.

Obviously, I've reformed. At grade school, I used to put my bologna and cheese sandwich in a certain spot on the shelf above our coats. The sun would warm it and melt the cheese.

Cathy in SWPA

" I'm sure I and my genious (vast exageration) friends would have remembered if our classmates spent the afternoon in school barfing their brains out"

When I was in first grade, I went to an old school that didn't have a cafeteria. The lunches were catered in. We had macaroni salad for lunch one day, and by the end of the school day everyone WAS barfing their guts out.

The mac salad had turned on a warm fall day. That was 40 years ago and I STILL can remember the smell of several hundred sick kids.

Since then I've been kind of a freak about food safety.

Yikes! I've been lucky to have never experienced food poisoning- but I do buy bagged lettuces on occasion, so I'm probably asking for it.

Modern medicine has created a new generation of humans who are totally handicapped health wise. Today if we take away all the drugs, chemicals, etc. I don't know how many months we can actually survive.

Recently, I listened to a discussion by a few research medical scientists; they were alarmed by what we are doing to ourselves.

They mentioned that typically within our bodies, there are more microbe cells than human cells, almost all of them are benificial essential organisms for good health.

In the name of good sanitary practices, we keep killing them off.

One interesting finding, they are suspecting that current obesity problem is caused by the lack of certain "germs" in the body which can only be acquired thru the birth canal, but because of the prevalence of cesarean births, these "germs" are lacking in many people.

For most people, there is nothing wrong about having to barf once in a while.

dcarch

kframe, good to see you! LOL at first I read your story as 'macaroni and cheese' (one of your contributions to the forum), then reread it and was relieved to see 'macaroni salad'.

For most people, there is nothing wrong about having to barf once in a while.

Good, because that's what I just about do every time I think of you washing and overspicing smelly food, LOL!!!

For all the "problems" modern medicine and sanitary habits are causing, it's pretty amazing that mortality rates continue to decline, isn't it?

"---For all the "problems" modern medicine and sanitary habits are causing, it's pretty amazing that mortality rates continue to decline, isn't it?
"

It is also amazing how fast a handicapped person can move in a wheelchair.

There is a limit on medical advances, there is no limit on germ's ability to adapt.

dcarch

I'll just go ahead and believe that what you said about c-sections isn't true, for my own sanity. I had 13 lbs worth of babies in me- you do what you have to do.

The link between childhood obesity is tenuous at best...and is merely a supposition certainly nothing supported by trusted researchers...

This quote comes from another site called "fitday" and was written by someone with a string of letters after her name.

"The "Spurious Relationship"

When conducting research, one error that can be made is finding a "spurious relationship." This type of error happens when researchers see coinciding events and determine that they are related. For example, one notices that ice cream sales go up in summer. One also notes that fires increase in summer. One therefore determines that ice cream sales cause fires. Clearly other factors are in play. The same can be said of the c-section and obesity relationship. If you take a look at the study, the findings aren't as clear, or as large, as the researchers claim.

Jenny, I don't think you have to be too concerned about that. They key work is "suspect", not "proven"

In addition, obesity is always a result of a combination of many factors, genetics, eating habits, life style, etc.

BTW to make it "cooking" related, sounds like you got a big one in the oven! LOL

When is it going to happen?

dcarch

Dcarch, I have twin boys. They'll be 2 in September. I do actually believe that we are killing off necessary germs- but I also think the problem lies in what we're killing them off with. I think a lot of the chemicals we're using (and eating) are much more dangerous than any germs.

I actually agree that there's good evidence that we're oversanitizing our lives with antibacterials, etc., and there's credible evidence that our children's immune systems are being compromised by not exposing them to enough germs.

But to me it doesn't sound unreasonable to follow safe principles in food production, distribution, preservation and preparation in order to avoid getting sick. In this day and age time is a commodity. Barfing for a couple days might not kill me but it will either ruin an already-to-short weekend, or eat into precious PTO at work.

I agree that we are over sanitizing things, my old doctor told me we are "sanitizing ourselves sick" and that immune systems cannot develop immunities to things that they are not exposed to.

However, I also believe that today's children haven't been exposed to a lot of stuff for several reasons, not always within our own homes. Every grocery store, school teacher, petting zoo, children's museum has hand sanitizer, so everything around our children is getting "scrubbed".

So, would I eat the chicken? Yeah, I'd still eat it, even after reading this thread. Would I feed it to the grandkids? Nope. The immune systems of the young, the elderly and the ill are not the same as mine.

Annie

Our body systems can deteriorate rapidly if not stressed.

Note that an astronaut can not walk or stand properly after a short while out in gravity free space.

Jenny, I have a relative who has twin 2-year old boys. The boys got sick every other week in the beginning. They got the germs from the nursery and from each other. Now they are the healthiest naughtiest active boys you have ever seen.

I laugh every time I see now some office buildings have those, whatever they are called, sanitary wraps for passengers for elevator buttons.

dcarch