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Wellness Wednesday for February 8, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Is anyone here knowledgable about food safety? I really hate getting food poisoning. I've been in Asia for a few months and I'm surprised to see prepared foods including seafood and meat being left at room temperature at grocery stores and food markets all day long. I've seen this in Thailand, South Korea and Japan. In the US prepared foods are required to be refrigerated or heated at all times for food safety reasons.

I did some googling but didn't find any satisfying answers as to whether I personally (as an American) can safely eat food that's been left at room temperature for hours in grocery stores in Asia or not. One forum I read said that food producers (i.e. farmers) have much more strict regulations in East Asia than the rest of the world so it's not a concern. (They also said that in the US and other countries, food safety falls more on the end seller rather than the producer as in East Asia.) Another forum said that Asians are just more used to the contagions that would be present than foreigners so they don't get sick. Another forum mentioned something called "fried rice syndrome" which is a common food poisoning from leftover rice that hasn't been stored properly. If either of the latter two cases are true I think I should avoid eating food that's been sitting out but I'd like to get some advice here.

I'm surprised to see prepared foods including seafood and meat being left at room temperature at grocery stores and food markets all day long.

It may be cured or preserved in some way or high salt content . You sure as hell would not keep milk at room temp

Actually, milk in grocery stores is kept at room temperature in Europe.... https://www.thehealthyjournal.com/faq/why-isnt-milk-refrigerated-in-europe

Granted it's kept refrigerated after opened in Europe. You should still refrigerate unopened milk in the US.

I would be careful about generalising statements like that. They keep the UHT milk in room temperature, not pasturised milk and What is more common varies from country to country with UHT being generally more popular on the continent (but not in all countries) and pasturised being more popular in the UK and Nordics. If you go to "Europe", don't assume that milk can be left out, look at the carton.

UHT milk is available in most/all countries i would imagine with the most widely recognized form being the small portable milk cartons for coffee milk.