Comment by stametseater
3 years ago
All foodstuffs are contaminated with germs, unless you go to extraordinary effort to prevent it (e.g. intense gamma radiation.) Unless there is some particular reason to care (you're a hospital feeding people who had their bone marrow nuked by cancer/chemo), then the correct solution is to stop caring. Who ever heard of people dropping dead because they brewed their tea with sub-boiling water? This isn't happening, it's not something you should worry about.
People mostly get by fine without boiling their salads but they do occasionally get e coli or something.
That's widely understood, but I hope nobody is boiling their salads in response to that statistic. Maybe tomorrow I'll trip on my shoelace and crack my skull open on the sidewalk, but I'm not going to wear a helmet just in case. There is an endless supply of extremely low probability ways to die, but if you spend your time worrying about all that crap you'll ironically hasten your own demise by stressing yourself out. Round those small possibilities down to zero and stop worrying about it.
They occasionally get hepatitis or something and die.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi-Chi%27s
Oddly, the restaurants are gone, but there is salsa using the brand in some supermarkets still. I wouldn't buy it, even though it presumably is just someone else using the logo.
They still exist in my country! (Belgium)
Do they really use gamma, or just electron beams like in a TV tube?
Gamma rays are definitely used.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation
Either.
they even found salmonella in tea. to kill them one would need to heat the tea constantly above 70 degree Celsius over a period of ten minutes.
71°C for 1/2min to kill salmonella, instantly with 74.
10min is around 64°C.
Remember that the cup often cool down the water 10-15 degrees. So the water should not be under 90°C from the boiler to be safe.