Why are people always so quick to blame food poisoning on fast food?

Question

I work at Subway and we take so much care with food handling. We always take temperature checks and we all have our food handling certificate.

But at home most people don't wear gloves at home, some don't even wash their hands or take the temperature of their food.

Answer 1

I totally agree with you. I have been a manager at Subway for 8 years. I have had people call and say that I just ate at your restaurant an hour ago and now I have food poisoning! Not possible. People often say I ate at a takeaway place a few hours ago and then got sick. I got food poisoning. That is not necessarily true. Although many people want to associate their discomfort with the last meal they ate because that's the meal that came back up, you can't make that assumption.
Incubation periods for the bacteria and viruses that cause food-borne illnesses range from several hours to several weeks. For most types of food-borne illness the time elapsed between ingestion and symptoms will be 24 to 72 hours. It could have been something you ate two days ago.

If you really had gotten food poisoning from a restaurant there would be other reports. The only true way to know if you got food poisoning is to go to the doctor. He will take stool and urine samples and pinpoint exactly what the problem is.

Answer 2

I wonder how many household kitchens would pass a health inspection?I think in the home it is better to not wear gloves in food preparation because you'd be more inclined to wash your hands.Many people are not aware when they cause cross contamination while preparing food in the home. I think most franchises try to keep things clean to public health standards.The public is very quick to sue for a fast buck.I remember a lawsuit that was successfully won by someone who was burned on their thighs when they tried to juggle their coffee between their legs while driving. STUPIDITY should not be rewarded, but it is cheaper for some large companies to pay out of court rather than fight it.Any business that has food on site has the potential to have a rodent or pest problem.How many homes have these same problems and the family still eats the food prepared there.Grocery stores, restaurants, warehouses, etc all can be harbouring dirty secrets. As a consumer you must be diligent in your own prep. of food. You don't know it's history. In most areas you can access the Public Health reports of businesses in your area.Don't rely on rumors as being fact.

Answer 3

I think the bar at Subway is set a bit higher, especially considering you work in front of us. But in the burger joints, you can hide it alot more. I think fast food gets a lot of blame because depending on your local economy, they'll hire just about anyone, including the guy who looks homeless and coughs big phlegmy coughs into his sleeve. That, and while you may not wear gloves to cook at home, generally the cooking is shared by just a few people and only serves a handful. And if my wife or I am sick, we defer to the other to make dinner, whereas most fast food places I've worked at want you to be practically dying before you can call in sick. All these things don't neccesarily always make fast food the culprit, but they do make it a pretty easy target.

Answer 4

As a human nature, people blame others for various reasons. Some of them are:

1. To present an alibi for their own shortcoming or mistake as an excuse,
2. To defame a particular person or establishment by rivals by design or otherwise,
3. To draw some compensation by design,
4. To draw sadistic pleasure by design.

Fast food, all over the world, is not considered good for the health but being satisfying to palate it is relished and consumed in great quantity, especially by the youngsters. Now, if something goes wrong, even after a long time of consuming food from a fast food joint, people especially parents tend to blame it on them to scold/scare their children.

I trust that reputed joints take extra care towards hygiene but people, being humans, do sometimes faulter and something comes up which puts such joints on mat.

Then there are cases where people take advantage of their (joints) vulnerability and try to make extra bucks, sometimes successfully too.

Answer 5

Society tends to look for the easy answer and sees the high calories in fast food and concludes that is why people are fat. For some who eat fast food often that may be the case. That is not the case for me. I was a very fat kid (200 in 4th grade and over 450 after high school) and over the last 9 years I added 400 to go from 220 to 620. I hardly ever ate fast food. What I did and do like to do is overeat. That is what makes people fat and in my case very fat. I choose this behavior because I am happiest when I am very fat and love my size and the way I show it. Weight gain occurs when calorie intake exceeds calorie burn. The less active you are if you eat a lot the fatter you will be. I am the case in point.

Answer 6

I think sometimes people pick up a stomach virus. Eat some where later get sick and just think it's the food that made them sick. I agree. Work in fast food as a teen and never saw anyone do anything to the food and they were always checking the foods. Mcdonald's in the worse for throwing food away after it's been out for a short time.

Answer 7

Because so many fast food restaurants have been guilty of not washing their hands, wearing gloves, or cooking throughorly the food and lost lawsuits, suffered heath department violations.

I love Subway. Subway isn't fast food.

Answer 8

well fast foods name is in it all. have u ever seen a note on a menu that consuming raw or undercooked meats coudl be dangerous. the burger patties are normally frozen and have to be cooked, if they're not cooked u could get all sorts of gross nasties. soem fast food places arent clean. liek some mcdonalds, rat feses coudl be in ur burger. (rumor, but soem truth to in nontheless) some food expired and is still used. some ffr (fast food resturants) import meats and other foods. take for example the wheat gluten adn snafu with china. toothpaste doggie food. all sorts of things. ffr are into making money with the cheepest food. at home houses tend to be cleaner, and parents espessally try to cook food acordingly if they are feeding children. and washing ur hands is mostly a way to keep from spreading germs and stuff to other food. i.e cooking beef and then chicken.

Answer 9

I think it has a lot to do with media. You don't hear about Aunt Sue getting everyone at the family reunion sick with her potato salad but you will hear about people getting sick from fast food because it's more of a matter of public health and interest which, in turn, makes it more news worthy. And people are rarely as safe at home handling their food as people in restaurants are. In Washington, we have to take a food handler's safety class every two to three years and the vast majority of horror stories I've heard in those classes are homecooks with a "it won't happen to me" attitude.

Answer 10

Well it depends on some places like Mcd's,my bro used to work there as a casher he said he seen rats! there they don't take care of food.And i love subway!!!!! so some places are clean and some places are not.. but home food is all ways good and clean because you are cooking it!