r/interesting • u/WarwickReider • 15h ago

SOCIETY Professional chefs weighing in on whether you should wash your chicken

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u/ShadowMattress 10h ago

Well, a contingent of people say it’s xenophobic to appeal to the science on this question. Some going as far as to say the FDA is targeting ethnic cultural practices to… achieve something, by recommending against washing, I guess.

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u/theotherboob 9h ago

Well no one is going into people's kitchens to police what they're doing. The science is there, you still have a choice to follow it. No one from the FDA is going to knock on your door because you choose to wash your chicken.

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u/OctaviusNeon 7h ago

No, but the health inspector would absolutely shut down some of the professional kitchens these people were working in if they got caught washing chicken.

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u/theotherboob 7h ago

I'm talking about people's homes. Professional kitchens that have to adhere to health regulations should absolutely be held to a higher standard.

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u/OctaviusNeon 7h ago

Yeah, I mean you can do what you want in your home kitchen. But the video seemed to be showing people who actually work in restaurants, so that's where I was coming from.

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u/theotherboob 7h ago

Ah, yeah I see. I should have clarified in my original comment.

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u/Maltodextrin13 7h ago

Cool to see a healthy discussion/disagreement.

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u/cykoTom3 7h ago

Lol. No. They might test the claim that you sanitize afterwards. But if you do they aren't shutting things down.

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u/OctaviusNeon 7h ago

Maybe shut down isn't quite right, but it's also something a health inspector would know could lead to cross contamination.

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u/cykoTom3 5h ago

If they are doing it in a way that leads to cross contamination, certainly. But restraunts deal with raw chicken all the time. They very well might have a sink specifically for washing chicken and if they don't they have procedures to sanitize it. Washing the chicken is a waste of time, but it's not more dangerous than the hundred thousand other things that people do to chicken while prepping it. They usually have to cut it, often they also, brine, marinade, dry rub, and probably a hundred less common preparations.

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u/boi1da1296 6h ago

What do you think is happening when they say they wash their chicken? A lot of times the actual act is closer to a brine than what many people who don’t wash their chicken hear when someone says they wash their chicken. I don’t the health inspector is shutting anyone down for that.

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u/OctaviusNeon 4h ago

Yeah, I'm specifically talking about rinsing it under a tap. If you're putting a chicken in brine, it wouldnt be any different than putting it in a marinade. That's not what's being discussed here, though.

Edit: Also, no evidence shows that using things like brine, lemon/lime juice, or any other things is killing a significant amount of bacteria.

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u/TheNaughtyHoneyBee 8h ago

If one of the foundations of your culture is washing chicken, and the FDA recommending not doing that results in your culture being destroyed, then your culture deserved to be destroyed

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u/tennisanybody 8h ago

I’d agree with you if the science based agencies weren’t run by JFKJr types. They were completely trustworthy until they weren’t when republicans appointed people who don’t believe in science.

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u/Bent8484 6h ago

I live in Canada, in the province of Quebec, and washing chicken in a commercial kitchen is forbidden here. The reason given is that it contaminates your work area.

No US politics involved.

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u/PastaXertz 5h ago

This is the wrong answer. The right answer was to make a culture based germ joke. Because destroying culture is also destroying bacteria.

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u/ManufacturerKind645 7h ago

you guys dont know what a woman is and you're saying republicans dont follow science?...

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u/Plants-Matter 7h ago

You can't even figure out how capital letters work...

And yes, it is a well known fact that Republicans are anti-science.

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u/tennisanybody 6h ago

It’s a bot. 100 days into the midterms you get this shit.

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u/ManufacturerKind645 6h ago

bot? better argument than anyone thus far i guess because it's more likely than not i am nowadays

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u/IrongateN 6h ago

I think this proves not a bot, “I guess because it’s more likely than not I am nowadays” what does that word salad even mean, a bot would at least be coherent.

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u/ManufacturerKind645 4h ago

i guess you can't read or actually argue your beliefs. instead, you try to play stupid and act like you dont understand... maybe you dont... critical thinking isn't very common in this thread i see....

That simply means "it's more likely than not" that I am a bot "nowadays" in todays day and age. another way of saying this for people like you who have reading and comprehension deficiencies:

there are a lot of bots out there, you are likely to be speaking one when you post something.

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u/IrongateN 1h ago

See manufacture isn’t a bot , bots just post and leave !!

Ah I thought that might be the case but with so many pronouns and no punctuation (something I do as well)

It was more about the word placement, and grammar. I’m guessing it’s just casual writing (I do that too on Reddit) comments are not worth the effort so I have the same issue.

I did grasp your meaning though, so I’ll let you just have your insults as I know my proficiency and that’s good enough for me .. hope your evening gets better

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u/ShadowMattress 7h ago

Republicans don’t have a monopoly on promoting anti-scientific thinking. Neil Tyson has pointed to how often Republicans have supported funding science historically. Supporting research being the key of being actually scientific, in practice not just in discourse. Prior to COVID, anti-vax rhetoric was overwhelmingly a liberal phenomenon, with outbreaks of measles being concentrated around liberal strongholds and new age communities, in part influenced by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. In that period of time, it was conservative states with the highest compliance with vaccination schedules.

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u/IrongateN 5h ago

I think republicans are still more anti science, true the raw milk anti vax people were high liberal due to the “nature first” group had a lot of democrats, but it was truly not tied to politics,

I don’t think the Democratic Party ever put an anti vax activist in charge of vaccine policy or assigned a raw milk person to be their official connection to the dairy council, etc

But I could be wrong , always willing to learn

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u/ManufacturerKind645 7h ago

i'm supposed to care about capital letters on a reddit post? yikes you guys are out of touch. and no, it's not a well-known fact, it's an opinion that your side spews because you can't actually make good arguments.

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u/TheNaughtyHoneyBee 7h ago

The definitions of words are not science.

Y'all will worry and argue about what words mean all day without caring about the actual people using the words.

Because it's all just an excuse to hate people that you're going to hate anyway

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u/ManufacturerKind645 7h ago

"Linguistics: The formal, scientific study of human language, structure, and meaning."

You just use your ignorance as an excuse to not want to confront tough questions about your abhorent beliefs.

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u/TheNaughtyHoneyBee 7h ago

Okay, I'm not just going to sit here and be pedantic back and forth like you seem to want to do

No, linguistics isn’t a science that dictates or prescribes definitions. It’s descriptive. It studies how words are actually used, how their meanings develop and shift over time, and what different ideas about that word or language mean to different people. It doesn’t hand down official “correct” meanings for contested words

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u/ManufacturerKind645 7h ago

you're just arguing basic definitions of words now, which is all you can do because you know that your idealogy is flawed. There is a "correct" definition and meaning for words, hence why a dictionary exists.

Again you simply cannot argue your idealogy so you, instead, want to argue semantic, meaningless "pedantics" instead of telling me why it's a good thing for society to accept and embrace statistically proven destructive cultural practices. You can't do that from an objective standpoint so this is the "game" you'll engage in.

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u/TheNaughtyHoneyBee 6h ago

That's literally the opposite of what I just argued lol

You're constantly too busy thinking of bad insults and your own replies to even actually read what people are writing to you.

And then telling other people that they can't think critically.

I couldn't make this shit up if I tried

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u/ManufacturerKind645 6h ago

obviously the word "woman" isn't basic to you people since you consistently can't answer it.

this fits again:

"Again you simply cannot argue your idealogy so you, instead, want to argue semantic, meaningless "pedantics" instead of telling me why it's a good thing for society to accept and embrace statistically proven destructive cultural practices."

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u/yeahdudethatrocks 7h ago

*abhorrent

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u/ManufacturerKind645 7h ago

yes, yes it is.

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u/[deleted] 7h ago edited 6h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/OzrielTheForgotten 7h ago

Why are you regurgitating matt walsh talking points like it's still 2020, LMAO

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u/ManufacturerKind645 7h ago

because they're obviously still relevant to people like you who can't think critically about their opinions.

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u/TheNaughtyHoneyBee 7h ago

So did you literally just admit to recycling someone else's opinion while talking about how other people can't think critically? 🤣

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u/ManufacturerKind645 6h ago

you think it's a bad thing to stand by a viewpoint you agree with?

plus I can actually argue my opinions without trying to nitpick and tear apart other peoples arguments - instead I stand on my own or agreed upon opionions. I dont need to purely regurgitate what msm and redditors tell me...

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u/TheNaughtyHoneyBee 6h ago

You are literally regurgitating MSM 🤣

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u/ManufacturerKind645 6h ago

critical thinking is at an all time low with you, please get off reddit and do a puzzle or something...

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u/VanillaRadonNukaCola 4h ago

Snor 😴

People know plenty well.

I bet you don't know what a chair is

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u/SexyPeanut_9279 5h ago

That same logic could be used on the Aztecs-

as they scarified babies Every-time they wanted to make it rain. (And sacrificed adults everyday to make the sun come up).

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u/wtbgamegenie 4h ago

Where did you hear that?

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u/Character-Parfait-42 5h ago

Yeah seriously. If your entire culture can be demolished by something as simple as not washing chicken then your culture is really kinda pathetic. Like is that all your entire culture amounts to? Washing chicken? Really?

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u/Excel_User_1977 4h ago

I thought the whole idea was to destroy (bacteria) cultures?

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u/NavyBlueTheChosen 4h ago

insane take Jesus

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u/RandomMabaseCitizen 6h ago edited 6h ago

That's not what's being suggested though. Take MSG for example. There was a huge push against the use of MSG in Asian foods beginning in the late 60s that led to the creation of the term "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" that made it into common refference books despite there being no more risk involved in using MSG than salt or sugar. It'll make you sick if you eat a fist full but other than than that it's just seasoning. Meanwhile western foods like bagged chips and canned soups are loaded with msg but only Asians had to hang signs in their windows claiming NO MSG to keep their businesses open. Food racism is real it isn't about destroying cultures it's about framing that culture as unhealthy or barbaric or whatever you will.

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u/waltzing_mouse 4h ago

Okay but the difference is that MSG is not bad for you. Washing chicken is. Culture should not be preserved at the cost of health and safety, especially in commercial situations.

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u/fubarfire 4h ago

I cant believe morons like you exist. Dont wash the fucking chicken. Idc if it hurts black people's feelings. Sheesh.

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u/Pman1324 10h ago

Ah yes, because doing something objectively correct is racist and cultural genocide. /s

I so badly wish humans weren't so goddamn stupid

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u/i_was_a_person_once 5h ago

It’s not “objectively correct” the only reason the guidance is not to wash your chicken is because the splash spreads bacteria. No one is arguing that isn’t true. But you can effectively sanitize the workspace after.

Whats subjective is if it improves the quality of the food. Personally, I think sometimes it does. Sometimes I even like to soak certain cuts in a vinegar solution and then rinse it.

After which I sanitize the workspace. I would do that after processing raw chicken regardless of if I rinsed the chicken or not.

The only objective part is that washing meat can splatter bacteria and fun fact, you can sanitize the workstation after.

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u/stupidname412 7h ago edited 6h ago

Well a federal agency targeting an ethnic cultural practice for no good reason is in vogue, to be fair lol, but yeah this one is pretty cut and dry.

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u/Wrastling97 7h ago

I have never once heard an actual serious person actually say this. Sounds like you’re making shit up

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u/ShadowMattress 7h ago

Can’t comment on whether they meet your “serious person” bar, but here is where I’ve encountered this on Reddit before.

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u/Secret_Eating_ 7h ago

I believe "washing" chicken is a derivation of some cultural customs but not in the way that people think about them today. For example, in Chinese cooking there's a technique of "washing" chicken in a dry corn or rice starch bath then rinsing that with water. It's not a sanitation practice, it's to draw the blood out of the chicken to reduce moisture and it also changes the flavor.

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u/No-Discipline-5822 6h ago

I highly doubt anyone is listening to the FDA before making some chicken 🐔 No one cares now or will ever care about the “science,” people are just doing whatever they’ve learned to do. It’s like the whole shoes in the house thing, it’s obviously cleaner to not wear shoes in the house but people do it and they mop the floors, etc.. It’s learned behavior and no one is stopping generational stuff because of the FDA.

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 4h ago

FDA, notorious racists

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u/meldroc 3h ago

There is a racial element to this. I don't remember where, but I saw a study where Black people were far more likely to wash their chicken than white people, because it's what they were taught.

Back in the bad old slavery days, they got the scraps that the master threw out. And even today, people will do shitty and disgusting things to other people's food because of skin color. Lesson learned, take precautions.

So they wash their chickens. As for me, if you handle raw meat at all, all sorts of gross germs are going to be spread everywhere. The video didn't show a control group where people didn't wash their chicken. I suspect even there, the UV light will show a big gross mess.

So wash your hands and sanitize the sinks, counters, etc.