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“Enjoy Your Next Cheap Pepperoni Pizza”: 30 Disturbing Facts About The Food Industry That May Leave A Poor Taste In Your Mouth
When we're hungry and our tummies are aching for food, we don't think about the interworking of the kitchen or slaughterhouses. Unfortunately, it becomes an afterthought or we choose not to go there entirely.
Sometimes a shocking headline or one person's nudge, however, prompts us to go into these uncomfortable yet essential waters. So when u/Miserable_Papaya1814 recently asked the Ask Reddit community "What dark facts do you know about the food industry?", insider secrets spilled like Kevin's famous chili from The Office. To provide you with a comprehensive overview of what goes on behind closed doors in the food industry, we have curated a list of the most intriguing responses down below.
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The amount of waste thrown away every single day by grocery stores. I worked in the meat department of a decently sized grocery store and the waste their was nauseating. I s**t you not, we would throw away an industrial sized garbage bin worth of meat, fish, and poultry every single day. The expiration dates dictated everything which is obviously a sensible policy to have, but they wouldn't do anything about it. They wouldn't donate it, let employees take it home, or make adjustments to the orders so we wouldn't have to throw so much away. The reasoning was always "better have to much than not enough" which I guess makes a little sense, but when I am throwing away dozens of pounds of tenderloins, center cut fish and shellfish per night, its to much. Mind you, this is one department of one grocery store.
Sorry for the rant but I feel like it needed to be said.
If you've seen the 2017 eye-opening documentary 'Wasted! The Story of Food Waste', featuring Anthony Bourdain, Osteria Francescana's Massimo Bottura and other celebrated chefs, you know what a terrible tragedy the food industry is. According to current data, there are approximately 1.3 billion perfectly fine foods available to us that simply end up in the bin.
And while it's appropriate to think that it's fine to do with food that you purchased as you please - even swim in 600 lbs of Nutella for that matter; that is enough food to feed 2 billion people - enough to feed starving folks across the globe twice. Or as Richard Swannell from Wrap, The Waste and Resources Action Programme based in the UK, explained to BBC: "[It] would fill 23 million 40-tonne trucks. Bumper-to-bumper, enough to circle the Earth seven times."
As a former chef, I've got to say that I've never seen any of the horrible stuff mentioned here over my career (mostly higher end and fine dining establishments).
We on ocassion would have things like frozen airline chicken breasts brought in, but other than that we did all prep and cooking by hand with fresh ingredients from mostly local purveyors when possible.
We also broke down and deep cleaned every night from the ranges to the floors to the wells to the vents. Every night.
Myself and staff have always taken this s**t very seriously, and it's always disappointing when you hear of this kind of behavior. Do better, people.
It would be okay, however, if food waste would only concern our consciousness. But as it turns out, all that food that doesn't end up in our tummies produces 8-10% of overall global greenhouse gas emissions. You see, when food breaks down at landfill sites, it releases harmful greenhouse gases like methane into the atmosphere, thus increasing extreme weather disasters that's been going on around the planet.
If food waste were a country, it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind the US and China, according to a United Nations Environment Programme report. Definitely not a place we'd like to visit.
I worked catering back in college, and the amount of food we threw away was nauseating.
One time I ran a wedding and we had so much food left over, I started not to give a f**k.
I'm not throwing $500 of filet mignon in the trash.
I divided it up for us, and we took it home.
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
We have an unspoken policy to not waste. Going to be making chicken stock? Cool. the juices from the baked chicken are yours. Special is done for the month? Who wants the no longer necessary ingredients? Have to throw out a pizza due to time expiring? We've got a massive homeless population. Salad looks sketchy? Owner is having salad for dinner. There is still waste, but only what is just unviable. We take pride in these practices.
that the fishing industry is destroying the oceans. its so horrible how much 'by-catch' is things like sharks, dolphins etc that die for no reason. also tuna are an endangered species bc of the fshing industry
Not to mention the concept of bottom trawling - dragging a net along the ocean floor and turning everything that is down there over. You are ruining the ecosystem, and it takes a long time for nature to re-establish it afterwards.
In order to understand the inner workings on food waste, Bored Panda reached out to Luke, or u/Zastrow_Studios, as he's known on Reddit, who was one of the top-voted comments on the thread. "If I'm being honest, at the beginning, it didn't bother me that much," he explained in a message, referencing his experience working in a grocery store's meat department.
Sometimes the salads aren't bug free. There were times where I received c**p for taking too long washing lettuce. Staff would wash a large container of lettuce like once or twice. I did it 3 or 4 times. I didn't stop until the water was clear and had no bugs. The others had a "who cares" attitude.
One time my boss needed my help and said to me frustrated, "The lettuce is already washed, unpack it in salads quickly." The lettuce looked dirty so I said to myself "I can't sell this to people."
I washed it and guess what the water looked like.
Dark brown from soil, 50+ dead gnats, a living and swimming spider the size of a penny.
When I was in cooking class I had a teacher tell me "Oh, extra protein." Not everyone is okay with eating bugs. To this day I cannot stand hearing that dumb phrase. I wash all my produce really well.
1. Your server might be working while sick. They don't get paid time off and most restaurant managers flip their s**t if someone calls out, so instead of missing their rent this month they just chug Dayquil to hide the symptoms. Could by a cold, COVID, who knows?
2. The ice maker could have mold growing in it and nobody would know. I've never seen a restaurant clean one, ~~except for the rare instances where some dipshit drops a stack of glasses near it and they have to melt the ice to pick out the shards.~~ (actually scratch that, it doesn't mean they clean the maker itself; just the basin)
3. The nozzles for the soda fountain might be moldy and slimy too; some restaurants clean these as part of their side work, some don't. You'll never know.
4. Your server, if female, has almost certainly been sexually harassed by someone on the staff.
"However, as time went on, it became sickening. On numerous occasions, while disposing of an unthinkable amount of meat, I had to rush out of the back rooms to throw up because of the smell and the realization of what I was doing."
That we can’t give newly expired food to the homeless. There was a single case of a homeless person getting food poisoning from donated food in the USA and the food industry used that as a reason to make it illegal. There is no reason for this other than so more people will be hungry and buy more food.
Simple, don't wait until it has already expired to donate it. Supermarkets in Melbourne, Australia used to reduce the prices of perishables a few hours before closing a day or so before expiry. People used to make a point of shopping just before closing to take advantage of this. I hope they are still doing it.
It’s more like a misleading labeling. No sugar. Right? Wrong if you read ingredients on a lot of these packaging it will say things like maltodextrin and dextrose. That’s actually a sugar. Because of regulation they only have to label it no sugar and people think it’s healthy, etc.
I remember when corps tried to make "Evaporated cane juice" a thing, and failed miserably. Most people aren't as stupid as they think.
And while Luke's experience is quite shocking, for most consumers who haven't had firsthand experience with food waste on that level, it's rather difficult to digest the scale of this problem. According to 2010 data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), approximately 26% of all meat, poultry, and fish is discarded by Americans at the retail and consumer level. Which means that approximately 1 billion chickens, over 100 million land animals (primarily turkeys, pigs, and cows), as well as around 25 billion fish and 15 billion shellfish (mainly shrimp) are produced, raising global greenhouse gas emission levels, to only end up in the bin.
After Chernobyl Nestle bought up all the milk that was unsuitable for human consumption in the EU. They powdered it and sold it to developing nations as baby formula.
A lot of dietary guidelines in the US were created on the basis of lobbying rather than research. Meat, eggs, and raw milk are vilified without evidence meanwhile refined grains are touted as healthy. Saturated fats are demonized while highly processed seed oils are promoted as heart healthy. Food dyes are allowed despite wrecking havoc on hormones and being banned in the rest of the world.
From what I keep reading in many news sites, lobbying in USA = bribery.
"Before working there, I considered myself mindful of food and avoiding waste. As a Boy Scout, I learned to respect my food, especially that which has been alive, and be mindful of my own waste production," Luke said. "Working in a grocery store strengthened my determination and made me realize how much corporations contribute to the waste problem."
McDonald's isn't as bad as you think and are actually really Adamant about food quality. Atleast a decade ago, I was surprised at how much care and handling happens in the kitchen (the good ones)
It was my first job and I thought I was going into the nightmares these types of subs attract but was humbly surprised that it was as clean as it was, I'd have to say the dirtiest part of the store was probably the grout in-between the tiles but even then those were done atleast every 2 weeks or monthly.
I can vouch for that. I worked for McDonald's. They take it really seriously. I think any food poisoning scandal or anything in that manner could hurt them really bad as they are really well-known. It is good tho. I trust them more than most of the restaurants.
Most animals raised for food, live miserable and unnatural lives
wish i could be vegan but im a minor and parents dont let me cook so i settle for vegetarian for now
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Here in France we have, quite apart from strict animal welfare regulations, something called 'Label Rouge' which is a set standard above and beyond the norm, so ensures free-range eggs, poultry and pigs, for example. Nearly always tastes a lot better too. I'm led to believed that German regs are generally not so strict, so although I can buy meat much cheaper there I do not normally do so.
We have the Red Tractor logo in the UK, similar sort of thing.
Load More Replies... That is why I always try to buy freerange meat, in the hope that the animal had some life before it was killed.
Most human who work in an office and live in a city, live miserable and unnatural lives
Most humans also lead miserable and unnatural lives, whether they're raised for food or not.
It looks like you're being bred for the same thing based on how fat your face is. You kind of look like a pig, too. Does that mean we can treat you inhumanely and cause you suffering and pain. Because, clearly you're not human anymore. You've been bred beyond that. I know I will get down voted for this. But, your words are disgusting and you should be treated like the sub-human you are.
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Although Luke's stint at the meat department didn't last "due to a combination of wanting to focus on school and the interactions with individual employees and upper management that made working there a nightmare," he said that before leaving, he wanted to see to what extent this issue was rooted in the company.
Chef from America, you don’t even want to know. I’m going to be honest, I just assume now that if I don’t make it with my own 2 hands, it’s not safe to eat. I’ve seen everything from plastic wrap, to sweat, to mold, to cleaning acids be served to people. And there’s more than that… that’s the arguably less nasty things.
Obviously that’s untrue, not every single thing you eat is unsafe. Probably not half, maybe half if you eat a lot of fast food, but for sure 20% of it… anyway, you just never know and I’ve seen way too much. I don’t trust restaurants, be it fast food or fine dining, unless I know someone who works there and they tell me it’s fine.
Edit : I’ll tell you, maybe, the worst thing I’ve “seen” and I’ll tell you where it happened. I’ve worked sports bars, steakhouses, Mediterranean restaurants and fine dining. You know which one takes the cake? Buffalo Wild Wings in WV, which really depresses me because I used to love getting amped on coke, watching UFC fights and getting that Asian Zing. My wife’s a server and typically prefers the sports bars, no s**t, she saw them use a microwave that had cockroaches crawling in and out of it, behind it, under it. That was one of their biggest things they used. Rat nest in the bathroom ceiling. Guess what? They passed their health inspection. So I guarantee it’s still like that.
The fact this person said "I used to love getting amped on coke" makes me question their judgment. And it's West Virginia. Arguably, the only states worse would be Texas and Florida.
The deep fryer grease is long overdue for a change; but it’s expensive to do so nightly.
I'm confused. As a deli worker who was 90% in the kitchen on closing shifts, we would drain the oil into buckets and take them back to a drain tank and dump it to be taken to recycling for like biofuel and whatnot. We were also required to filter the oil every 4 hours (2 hours on superbowl days) and from talking to other supermarket workers, wing joints, and fast food places that this is standard. Maybe mom and pop places? But I'm pretty sure it's illegal to not dump them.
"While I was working there, I did talk to members of the deli department, and they confirmed that they were throwing out a similar or even greater amount of food," Luke explained.
Worse I participated in as kitchen staff in a rather top-flight restaurant….. on a slow summer Sunday afternoon, the boss sent us down to the walk-in meat coolers to spray paint the rusted walls. We were instructed to not remove the contents of cooler first; rather just shift the meat from one side of cooler to other. The coat of silver spray paint will come off during cooking
As the meat needs to be packed in foil or containers for hygienic reasons and to keep fresh this should not be a problem as such. However, it does say something about the local Food Inspection authority. Top-Flight restaurants do have their strange things going on, but they never tinker with food in a way that might get guests sick or put off. It would ruin their business - top-flight guests don't accept this
In my country, buffets often sell spoiled food, like if the employees see mold on top of the sour cream, they just scrape it down and continue selling it. Also, if they sell cooked meat, they often leave them on the counter for days and add some oil to it every morning to look fresh.
One potential solution to battle food waste - perhaps the most significant - lies in the realm of law. A complex web of federal, state, and local laws creates significant barriers to redirecting food that would otherwise go to waste to those in need. The fear of legal consequences looms over food donations, as individuals or organizations can potentially be held liable if the donated food causes harm, illness, or even death to recipients.
They crush roaches when crushing chocolate beans. Too much work, not enough time.
More than most likely if you have a reaction after eating, it's due to the bugs
Here's a good one:
Health department regulations are EASILY skirted around, especially in the Chinese food industry, at least in the SF Bay Area, but as I've been told, everywhere around the US as well.
If a restaurant fails a health inspection, they usually have 30-60 days to correct it. After 60 days, they visit again, and if that restaurant fails again, they can get shut down. However, if the restaurant changes ownership in that time, they get another YEAR before being inspected again. So a lot of places will just shift ownership again and again throughout their family members; never ever bringing the restaurant up to code. It happens OFTEN. And it's something the health department denies again and again, and they even retaliate heavily against people who are outspoken against them.
I've seen health inspectors leave low boy doors open for 10 minutes and then take their Temps. Once it's above 40, you're docked. Health departments are corrupt as s**t. Heard rumors about bribes and all the other political corruption that plagues every aspect of the American legal system, but haven't seen anything in person besides that.
In my experience some inspectors give 14 days notice before an inspection so the place can be brought up to standard. I have always suspected these individuals get bribes for this.
Another significant factor contributing to the food waste problem is the high cost associated with its disposal. In the United States, commercial businesses alone generated approximately 7.6 pounds of waste per person per day in 2012, resulting in a staggering annual total of around 251 million tons of commercial waste, as reported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The process of transferring and disposing of this commercial waste incurred an estimated cost of $52.5 billion in 2017.
Grocery distribution warehouses are often extremely filthy and rarely cleaned. Wash anything canned, bottled or jarred!!! They're filthy as hell, covered in microplastics, rotten food, mouse pee, bird s**t, etc etc.
I used to do maintenance on conveyor systems for a major US chain and they just send s**t flying down the conveyors so fast that, its fairly common for glass to shatter because of the vibrations, food to fall off, etc etc. I saw Bats, Birds and Mice in that facility, but it was within tolerance of their health policy. Also saw people that were sick sneezing and coughing on products.
Never saw a floor scrubber go through the warehouse the entire 3mo I worked there and I was doing alternating double shifts! The only time I saw a broom was if there was shattered glass.
ABSOLUTELY wash anything that your mouth will touch! The one thing is that at least the food is often sealed in a secondary layer of packaging. (Such as cans are usually banded together in a plastic wrap.)
Pub basements are often absolutely disgusting and vermin can be seen running around. Nobody seems to care unless you are a CAMRA registered pub and even then you might only get inspected once in a blue moon.
As Alex Roberton, Walmart's spokesperson, told CBC news in 2016: "There's an assumption that retailers don't care. But retailers do care. It costs a lot of money to deal with waste, so it's not in a retailer's interest to just throw stuff out."
Over the years, the sugar content of our grocery items are increasing so people will buy more.
Lots of sugar is routinely added to processed foods, yes, to make it taste better for lower cost, particularly in the US where it's likely to be high-fructose corn syrup. This has been the case for decades, nothing to suggest that it's a recent and/or increasing trend. There has been a huge shift in perception over the last few years such that most educated people are aware that too much processed food is bad for you, and hence a move away from this is likely. Maybe not where you live, but certainly across most of Europe.
You'd never want to eat at a restaurant again once you saw how much of your $70 meal for two came frozen and pre-prepared in plastic bags.
Tbh, if I don't notice and it's not giving me reactions later, Idaf. I expect much of the food that can be freezed is frozen.
However, since then, Walmart seemed to step up its game. and introduced some initiatives to fight the food waste epidemic (at least on paper, that is). "When food goes unsold, Walmart works to get it to people and places that need it while it remains nutritious. In 2023, we donated more than 665 million pounds of food in the U.S. alone," the grocery mega-giant boasted in June.
Chocolate can have up to 60 insect parts per 100g and still be approved as safe for consumption by the FDA in the US.
Worked in the food industry for a couple years, all I can think of is how gross arbys roast beef looks in its bag before it’s cooked, just google it, hasn’t changed in 30 years.
Worked in a pepperoni factory 20+ years ago as an accountant. Found that the more MSP in the bill of materials, the lower quality and cheaper the product. Looking at the stuff, it looked kind of like an old square crumbly eraser if you remember those.
So I asked what MSP was. It's "mechanically separated pork". When I asked what that means, they told me that after all the good meat is cut off of a pig, a power washer is used to blast the remaining flesh off the carcass. That's scooped up, dried out and packaged as MSP.
Enjoy your next cheap pepperoni pizza.
Former chef here.
Never send send food back unless of course the chicken is still raw sorta problem
The daily specials are fridge clean outs.
Don't order fish on a Tuesday unless the establishment is a seafood restaurant
Last but not least try not to alter the menu and food to suit your taste. Chefs and owners work hard to create menus and recipes and get very upset when you ask for no ham in the chicken cordon bleu.
Don't eat at Unos. I worked BOH in salad and soup prep. I saw tons of trays of veggies accidentally dropped on the floor, walked over and picked back up with nary a rinse. The chili stays in the pot for days on end and they just add more water and beans. I saw unsavory things working at Friendly's too.
Big corporate chains seem to be the worst with this stuff. They breathe down the managers necks about keeping food and labor costs down, then the low paid cooks and servers get the brunt of it. They come in sick, reuse dirty food, and a remarkable percentage develope issues with drugs and alcohol, which they use to either get through work, or recover from it. (Yes I am speaking from first hand experience. Nothing like bartending for a living to teach you about your alcoholism)
Your green salad lettuce has been floating in a trash-can sized bucket containing a mixture of water and some chemical that keeps it crisp.
that is not entirely true, and definitely not the case everywhere. i can confirm that i worked in a restaurant with a salad station in the kitchen, and we had cambros filled with 1 bag of lettuce. at the end of the night if it wasn't done, a lid was put on it and back in the fridge. if it started to wilt we'd toss it and only open a new bag the next day.
Escargot. Ugh. Be wary.
Those exotic looking shells are reused many times. After being sent through the dishwasher, sometimes extra care is taken to make sure the soap hasn’t settled inside the shell.
The snail meat itself comes from a can and is stuffed into the shells.
The turkey in your Sunday turkey dinner at restaurant was likely cooked the night before. It sat out overnight cooling in the utility room. Maybe the automatic insect spray in the utility room dusted the turkey a few times during the night.
Nah. Anyone who has their Safeserve (and there should always be one certified person on duty) knows that rapid cooling is the only method. Also, even newbies are taught to cover food at all times (prep work aside). If you've personally encountered this, I don't care how much you like the folk in charge. Report it.
They. Don’t. Wash. Their. Hands.
i worked with a stoner who would poo poo and purposefully not wash his hands. i was his supervisor. he wasn't allowed "smoke breaks" unless he washed his hands.... he also wasn't touching any food until then too; i had to stand next to him and watch him. it was like working with a 5 year old.
Worked in food distribution warehouse. When the big blocks of cheese got moldy they were frozn and the mold scraped off. Then the cheese was sold to discount pizza places.
I've cut mold of cheese. As long as I can cut the mold off and it isn't spread deep or all over I'll use the cheese still.
Right out of college I had worked at a food testing lab. We did QC for vegis, cooked food, and meat. We mostly did beef.
Our two biggest customers were the near by slaughterhouse, the largest in the US, and one about 5 hours away in Nebraska.
The larger of the two, was honestly decent as far as food quality went. They had issues here and there but handled everything the way they were suppose to. Did everything by the book as far as food quality went. And even did more depending on their customer asks. They had burger king and wendys as two major customers for example and both of those two organizations have higher food quality standards than whats at your grocery store. (They still get cheaper beef but they are much pickier about what they will accept as servable.) Worker conditions though, that was a different story. I witnessed several walkouts and mass no call no shows. Much of their work force was placed there by immigration as they were largely refugees.
As an aside the city was built around that slaughterhouse and its history and diversity is really rich because of its immigrants. You can tell what generation a lot of families are there by their stories about the slaughterhouse and income levels now. Like in the 80s there were a lot of Vietnamese refugees at the slaughterhouse now a lot of the Vietnamese population still there is upper middle class, business owners, same w/ first wave mexican families from the 50s and so on. I'm not saying the slaughterhouse was good though... by in large it was a terrible place for workers. It was just a place where mom and dad busted a*s and their kids ended up much better off and started their own businesses or moved beyond being mass production butchers.
The smaller slaughterhouse in nebraska though... they prided them selve on being open range beef, organic beef... I can never prove it, though I have A LOT of circumstantial evidence, they bleached their samples to get negative test results. Part of the QC process is you need to forcibly rot the meat to make it grow whatever is in it. That way you make sure whatever makes ir rot isnt really bad. Like, E coli O157H7, or 0122 or O145 or several strains of salmonella and some other stuff... after you let meat rot for 14 hrs it smells like rotten meat. Not this place though. After 14hr in an incubator it smelled like bleach.
I have plenty of other storys but the latter sticks with me and I left out A LOT on it.
They do that with fish too. I had a friend in wholesale fish business and he told me you wouldn't believe what they do to fish to keep it white and fresh looking before packaging and freezing.
I spent a very brief time on dishwasher duty at a very popular seafood restaurant in our town. They served a lot of crabmeat au gratin in those small oval bowls. I couldn’t get that hard cheese ring off the inside of the bowl so I asked the manager what the trick was. He said “Just wash it. Those rings of hard cheese don’t come off and have been on there since we bought them.”
I’ve been in hundreds of kitchens and I can say(generally) the super popular local favorite places to eat are disgusting. The buildings are falling apart. The food is outdated. The walls, ceilings, and floors are alive with all kinds of bugs and rodents. Hopefully this is just my area and not widespread throughout the country…
Had a temporary job cleaning out grease traps for summer while in college. Let me tell we took the longest times at some restaurants you would think were nice. Believe it or not the best restaurants to clean were often fast food because they did it on a regular basis.
Artificial strawberry flavor used to come from beaver a**l glands.
I would assume it's been extracted from the glands. Kokoretsi and magiritsa in Greece is made from the innards and intestines of young.sheep or goats. Delicious, Foreigners balk at trying these but some have overcome their wariness.
They know most of their s**t is bad for our health but it all comes down to money, money, money
PAM and spray oil is pure fat
they are allowed to say it is 0 fat or calories because the portion size is under the cut off for what they have to report
This is common in many nutritional labels. They have ingredients in low enough counts in the sizes that they can use marketing manipulation to claim zero. Zero sugar sodas still allow me to enjoy carbonated drinks as a diabetic without a sugar spike.
Store brand food is identical to similar nationally advertised/distributed brands. One of my college summer jobs was at a grocery chain’s industrial bakery. We used to make hundreds of thousands of hotdog and burger rolls for sale at our local stores. On summer holiday weekends we also were subcontracted to make hundreds of batches for a national brand. Same recipe, same ingredients, same bakers, different bags with much higher prices printed on them...
Pretty much common knowledge, that's why Kellog's had the line "if it isn't Kellog's on the box, then it's not Kellog's in the box" I think they also had "we don't make cereals for anyone else" at one point.
Chef here. I’ve been at this 4 star resort for 3 years. I’ve never seen the beer tap lines cleaned.
McDonald's never repairs Ice Cream machine because the company that owns the ice cream machine can only repair the machine, and if they use any other company to repair the machine they sue
Also; if you're in the drive-thru, it's late, and you're told that the machine is down, chances are it's not broken. It's most likely been taken apart for cleaning, which is a very time-consuming process. People just assume that "down" means "broken", as opposed to simply not currently operating.
Raw milk is really f*****g bad for you. You're playing bacteria roulette with it. No matter how clean and careful the milking process is, dirt, cow s**t, and animal-borne bacteria get in the milk.
Of course. I'm old enough to have gone to get the milk from à 2 cows farm with my grandma, and the first thing everyone did at the time after getting milk was boil it. The cream rose on top, and my gran used it to make delicious cookies. In town, you went with your milkpail to the grocer's or dairy shop, and they lifted à lid on the counter and filled your pail with a ladle. That got boiled on arrival, too.
Everywhere food gets made is filthy. You can't even understand until you've seen it. I've worked at water treatment plants where they handle all the human s**t... I'd rather eat lunch outside there, than in most of the production areas in most of the food plants I've worked.
I got some horror stories...
Almost all the the chocolate you buy from commercial sources comes from child labour and trafficking. People are literally kidnapped and taken to farms where they are held at gunpoint. Children as young as 8 using machetes. No health care, no schools.
Companies like Nestlé and Mondalise (don't think that is spelled right) turn a blind eye and work from "plausible deniability"
You can buy fair trade chocolate, though, even those corporations aren't immune to corruption.
That nobody gives a s**t about deep cleaning and everything is covered in a thin film of grease.
When the Green M&M redesign debacle was going on it was because they were being sued by former child African slaves, from the Ivory Coast, that the chocolate company uses.
So they pushed the stupid story of the redesign of a ficticious commercial character to focus attention on that instead of the fact they were being sued by former child African slaves
The chicken in PF Changs chicken lettuce wraps are just the fat and gristle cut from the regular chicken they use in all their other dishes
That mechanically separated meat has now been replaced with a technological advancement to remove the label, but at the end of the day, it is essentially the same thing.
Listeria is a major major concern and lots of plants have issues with it, but they don't find it on food often at all so you don't hear much about it.
Ready to eat and ready to cook are the difference between cleanliness and testing at plants. Ready to eat has a much stricter testing policy.
Major companies determine thier own health standards. The USDA and FDA only enforce company standards and do not have many universally recognized federal health standards.
Hogs, cattle, and poultry is sprayed or soaked with chlorinated water as well as other chemicals to kill bacteria. However, this reduces "shrinkage" by adding water weight to meat. Once it's cooked that water weight is removed, and a 16oz steak will be the equivalent of a 12 Oz. This isn't necessarily a bad thing except for the price you pay for water.
The number of animals killed to support the human population is unbelievable. I have personally worked at both beef kill plants in dodge city, KS. In those 2 plants alone, 10,000 head of cattle are killed every day. Sanderson farms (which I have also worked at) between all thier chickens kill over 1 million chickens per day, and over 500 million per year.
I could go on, but overall I think this all stems from the lack of small local farmers.
Source: I am an industrial Refrigeration guy who specializes in Anhydrous Ammonia Refrigeration.
Customers play a big role in this. They want super cheap mest and lots of it. Small local farmers cannot deliver this. I buy my meat at a local farmer, connected to a small local slaughterhouse, and a butcher with own cattle and slaughterhouse. The animals are treated well and with respect, including the slaughtering. It is not cheap and I only can "afford" meat twice a week. Plus fish once or twice. I do not feel malnourished.
Spice factory worker here.
Companies don't care about expiry date of what we put in the packet, they only count the expiry date once its packed. Like you buy the ground pepper, expiry date is 10.10.23, but if we pack it on 15.06.23, the expiry date will be 2 years from 15.06, so basicly you can easly buy a 2year expired pepper which have more chance to infect you with salmonella.
Ohh also brands. We put the exact same things in all of brand, cheaper-expensive one? Its the exact same.
So many companies put the exact same product into differently labeled packaging. It all depends what sort of deal they have made with the different outlets. The plain label item in your supermarket is often exactly the same as the pricier brand on the shelf next to it.
The onion soup you’re eating now was started in a huge vat the prior night. The chef started it at end of shift and left. Then, the cleaning crew came along and cleaned the stove and the vents & fans above the stove using a powerful corrosive “degreaser” chemical. The soup vat isn’t covered.
Also if your steak tastes like rubber, it’s because the cleaners’ sneakers melt a bit while standing on the stovetop (griddle or char-grill) to clean the vents&fans.
What sort of stupid cleaner stands on a still hot grill. If it is hot enough to melt your sneakers it would burn your feet!
Your local Ski-Resort, one that stays closed most of the year is likely infested with mice/rats in the off-season.
Same goes for any seasonal restaurant/food truck.
some cooperations remove fiber from foods (like bread, white bread is white because of the removed fiber) so they taste better, expire quicker (meaning that people will buy the product again), and to taste sweeter which can appeal to the youth. This causes problems in people such as obesity and mental health issues.
Many cultures traditionally use only white bread and this was never a direct cause for health issues. Mediterranean diet is considered one of the healthiest possible dietary choices, and it makes wide use of white bread. Obesity and mental health issues come from other sources, such as the abuse of sugars and corn syrup in basically anything in the US food market, the sheer size of portions, or the fact that in the last three decades the first time water consumption surpassed soda sales was in 20-fuc*in'-17, and USA citizens depended on hydration that came from sources different than plain water for over 70% of the total (largest share: food 27%, coffee 14%, soda 10%, alcohol 5%, milk 5%, tea 8%, fruit drinks 2%).
You know why the food in adverts look so perfect? Because for pudding they add glue to make it look more creamy, for burgers they stuff the middle with paper
Yes, food photography is a whole new level of trickery and faking. They almost never use the real food, it doesn't work well with heat from lamps and the time required for a proper shoot. It's very interesting to see how they mimic textures. Common ones are colored mashed potatoes for ice cream, spray glue or paraffin for water droplets, soap for beer foam, elmer glue for any kind of sauce or even milk, motor oil for syrups, vaping cigarettes for steam.
If bananas ripen and produce brown/black spots all over them and the stem is still green/yellow, they're chemically ripened. (Not organic)
If bananas ripen with the stem turning brown/black without spots all over the bananas, they're naturally ripened. (Organic)
Also, the produce food label stickers with the numbers can also tell you which foods are organic and which ones are not.
I work in the food and dairy industries. If you could smell some of these places or see the amount of s**t they're allowed to get away with you'd never drink milk again.
Used to work for a big American Chinese food chain. the brown rice is actually soy sauce mixed into white rice instead of actual brown rice.
My boss fished out a bag with a tiny amount of milkshake mix remaining, he told me to use it, but I pointed out it had been there for over 2 hours. He then told me to do it anyway, when I suggested against it due to food poisoning risks, he did it and glared at me.
"Food" doesnt mean its safe for human consumption.
The FDA is full of people that are corrupted by money, sex, or ideology in the favor of "food" coorporations in order to get s**t labeled as "safe for human consumption" to increase their profit margins.
Do yourself a favor and shop the parimeter of the grocery store and avoid the interior.
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"The big fat suprise" by nina tiesholz.
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Humans have removed themself from natute but that doesnt mean nature has been removed from humans.
they allow a certain amount of pus from infected utters to be in the dairy
When loads came in the plant I worked at, we had pretty strict guidelines. No more than 10 individual bacteria could be present out of 10 fields at 1000x magnification. Milk was also always tested for the presence of antibiotics. If there were too many bacteria, it would be sent to make hard cheese. If there were antibiotics, all 10,000 gal had to be disposed of at the farmers expense
Chef Boyardee had an acceptable level of rat meat per vat of ravioli filling. Basically the weight of everything going into the slurry should equal a specific total bit occasionally the total would come in a couple pounds heavy. When this happened it was due to rats falling into open pots.
Damn. It makes me really hungry for some chef boyardee. Fun fact rats are actually really clean. Also another fun fact if we weren't exposed to anything our resistance to sicknesses and disease would fall dramatically and we would all be bubble babies. What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger.
Not much in the grand scheme, but the local KFC would spit in food or worse if they didn't like you. Could be order was too complicated, came around too much, or even just gave a slight attitude in their eyes.
Papa John's pizza tried to sell trademark and patent pizza recipe Pizza Hut pizza, and got sued for Patent and Trademark infringement $467,000/sale, basically Papa John's was selling you Pizza Hut
Still tastes damn good. Pizzahut around me are dried out and barely any sauce. Papajohns though... man they are tastey
Walmart deli, store 5307. Mold, and only once in the time I worked there did we change the grease. They never taught me how.
You've almost certainly been served decaf if you've ordered coffee towards the end of a night; you've possibly been served watered-down half and half if you asked for whole or skim milk with it
The ingredients of Nutella
(trigger warning. Anything you think you know about the meat and/or dairy industry, it's so much worse.)
Surprised no-one has posted ["Dominion"](https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch) here.
Some of these are just mayhem. Reminds me of a guy I knew that wouldn't eat croutons from restaurants. He swore to me that they were made from bread leftover from tables the night before. They just cut it up and tada! Croutons. I had to explain to him how croutons are made. Guy wrote a paper signed off on by NASA but thought croutons were just old stale rolls cut up and thrown in salads.
OK, next up, let's make sure all the water that touches us is distilled (better avoid rain and swimming!), and all our air is 100% pure (that's easy, really, /s/), and all our food is sterilized to the point it has no nutritive value so we'd be better off eating (sterilized) tree bark! Yay! ... In short, now that my sarcasm is out of my system, I'm a medical doctor, and you have no idea what you encounter that can kill you, will kill you, while you are doing something you think is "good for your health". The average exercise gym is foul, restaurants don't buy new chairs between patrons, you can get paranoid about anything. Just accept that the world is full of dangerous stuff, and that was true when we were all hunkered down gnawing on whatever we could get, including insects. Wanna see a heart of a guy who jogged every day, but did so by a road? Same heart as I'd seen in a 70-something *smoker*.
I worked for one of the major biscuit manufacturers in the uk when I was younger. The lines never stop, you cut yourself(happened a lot with cardboard inserts), have a runny nose, sneezing; I saw a flying ants nest fall on the conveyor belt, manager used a floor brush to sweep off that section without a pause. The machines are washed about once every two month to reduce the build up. The chocolate lines are the worse they need constant scraping just to keep them going. On the cleaning day they use buckets of semi hot water but that doesn't cut through the grease, they originally had steam guns to clean but it was deemed unsafe by health and safety so there are thirty plus years of black grime in all the joints and hard to reach places that never gets looked at. That black smudgy bit on one of your biscuit that you thought was just a little bit of char, is probably older than you.
70% of this list complaining of bugs or rats reminds me that this newer generation is going soft. There is an acceptable level of food "debris" that it needs to be safe for human consumption in America. It's best not to think about it if it makes you queasy but it's not going to kill you and if we sterilized everything 100% we would turn into a bubble baby scociety that the common cold would take out billions every year.
Some of these are just mayhem. Reminds me of a guy I knew that wouldn't eat croutons from restaurants. He swore to me that they were made from bread leftover from tables the night before. They just cut it up and tada! Croutons. I had to explain to him how croutons are made. Guy wrote a paper signed off on by NASA but thought croutons were just old stale rolls cut up and thrown in salads.
OK, next up, let's make sure all the water that touches us is distilled (better avoid rain and swimming!), and all our air is 100% pure (that's easy, really, /s/), and all our food is sterilized to the point it has no nutritive value so we'd be better off eating (sterilized) tree bark! Yay! ... In short, now that my sarcasm is out of my system, I'm a medical doctor, and you have no idea what you encounter that can kill you, will kill you, while you are doing something you think is "good for your health". The average exercise gym is foul, restaurants don't buy new chairs between patrons, you can get paranoid about anything. Just accept that the world is full of dangerous stuff, and that was true when we were all hunkered down gnawing on whatever we could get, including insects. Wanna see a heart of a guy who jogged every day, but did so by a road? Same heart as I'd seen in a 70-something *smoker*.
I worked for one of the major biscuit manufacturers in the uk when I was younger. The lines never stop, you cut yourself(happened a lot with cardboard inserts), have a runny nose, sneezing; I saw a flying ants nest fall on the conveyor belt, manager used a floor brush to sweep off that section without a pause. The machines are washed about once every two month to reduce the build up. The chocolate lines are the worse they need constant scraping just to keep them going. On the cleaning day they use buckets of semi hot water but that doesn't cut through the grease, they originally had steam guns to clean but it was deemed unsafe by health and safety so there are thirty plus years of black grime in all the joints and hard to reach places that never gets looked at. That black smudgy bit on one of your biscuit that you thought was just a little bit of char, is probably older than you.
70% of this list complaining of bugs or rats reminds me that this newer generation is going soft. There is an acceptable level of food "debris" that it needs to be safe for human consumption in America. It's best not to think about it if it makes you queasy but it's not going to kill you and if we sterilized everything 100% we would turn into a bubble baby scociety that the common cold would take out billions every year.
