How Restaurant Health Inspections Work

with us today, our good friend and colleague, Jack O'Brien. Yeah, so, first of all, say hello Jack, Hi, guys, thanks for having me. Sure, as as a little means of set up here, we want to let everyone know what how this kind of came about. We are expanding our podcast network, which is great and fun and awesome for everyone here.

And um, one of the super cool things that happened is is uh, our our boss or company owner said, hey, guess what we have just got Jack O'Brien away from Cracked dot com to come over to our network to kind of launch the comedy wing of our network. And um, I think that the people need to hear about your first efforts here a show that I think is great called and it's quite a challenge to but tell everyone about the Daily Zeitgeist. Right, So the Daily Zeitgeist is

a daily news, uh pop culture podcast. Basically we're trying to uh get a take a sample of what's going on in the big kind of national cultural unconscious. So we talked about news, we talked about pop culture. Uh, we discussed things like that. We've look at tabloids because those are news sources that more Americans see than just about any others since everybody needs to buy milk. So yeah, that's that's the sort of stuff we look at as

well as, you know, the actual news. And like Jack, you said something that I think probably past a few people by this is daily like Monday through Friday. You guys research and record and release a new podcast Monday through Friday. Right, that's what we do. It's actually been fun and I think we're kind of hitting our stride getting into a bit of a rhythm. But uh yeah, it's uh, it's just a lot of fun to kind of I get to read really interesting ideas and really

interesting news articles and talk about them every day. So I couldn't ask for a more fun job. So, um, where can everybody find this? Jack? Where's the Daily Zeitgeist? Well, if you know how to spell zeitgeist. You can uh search the Daily Zeitguy on just about any podcasting application. Uh,

I would recommend Apple podcasts. Uh, just the Daily and then type in Z and we should pop up and you you guys send a five dollar bill to each new subscriber for limited time, right, that's correct, every single one of them. Cool. Yeah, very limited time, very limited. We want to wish you an official welcome to the family. We you came to atlant and we hung out something and then we met briefly out in l A at

that podcast conference. But it's just really awesome to have you guys aboard and I look forward to see what else comes out of the comedy Wing here. Appreciate I guess thanks for coming on, Jack, thanks for having me. Lifelong dream, long time listener, first time caller, see Jack. But all right, man, well let's get on with the episode. So, Chuck, have you ever like been to a restaurant and seen something that you weren't supposed to see and been like,

I just ate here. I used to work at restaurants, as you know, and uh, you know, some of them are pretty gross. I worked at a couple of myself and I never saw anything that was like this is wrong, but it I realized over the years that that I'm in the minority in that sense. Dude. My first job as a as a bus boy, that was when I saw some of the most horrific things in my life, mainly because they had Oh man, it was the people that worked there. They were dirty folks. They were dirty folks,

and they were just um. They were people that didn't care about their own personal health and hygiene or in any way. It was all gross, gross. Gross. I saw a guy one time, should I even say this, yes, please, dish, and you're talking about kids working in the kitchen that are gross, like drop high school dropouts, and hey, I'm not knocking you. If you dropped out of high school, go get that G E D and and keep at it.

But these were not those people. They couldn't they couldn't even spell G E D. They're like, I didn't get my kid. Yeah, So these people, they were gross people. And I was thirteen and I couldn't speak up. I didn't know, like, I'm not gonna go to the owner of the restaurant at thirteen because he didn't care. But I saw one of these dishwashers go into a walk in cooler, and he was so mad about the schedule

that they put him on. He took the lid off of a big, you know, fifteen gallon pot of Brunswick stew and he put his his shoed foot and leg into it all the way to the bottom and then took it back out. And let me tell you, man, those shoes. I've never had more disgusting clothing in my life than the clothes that I worked in at a

barbecue restaurant. I know. They're like the whole reason box are in business is because it's the only thing that won't slide across the greasy during the floor of every single restaurant in every single city in the entire world. Everything about that job was disgusting. They would drop meat on the ground and say good catch and laugh and then pick it up off the floor. It was like it was like Upton Sinclair's uh the Jungle, the Jungle, like right before my little thirteen year old lines I

grew up on that job. In many many ways, the only way that it could have been more like the Jungle is if somebody actually died in the Brunswick stew and they just kept him in there. It was so foul. Dude, that's growdy. Man. You don't even know what our restaurant inspection score was. I didn't even I saw nothing like that at the restaurants I worked out. I worked at a handful of them, nothing like that. Yeah, I worked at a bunch more and it was nothing like that.

This was so that was the worst of the worst. Oh my god, they're all burning in hell now. So I drove by that place the other day on the way to Emily's parents and in a different route. And now it's like a cheat cheese a title max okay, which I don't even know what that is. You com pall in your car title there for extremely exorbitant interest rates. Got what were the ghosts of of redknecks passed dwell within those floors? Wow? Man, was the barbecue any good?

I guess it's a moot point, right? I still ate there, Oh dude? After the shoe thing, Yeah, man, I didn't. I was a kid. I didn't know. I mean, I didn't have brunsicks due that day wherever. Again, I don't know. I just I didn't know any better. I was dumb. You ate the Brunswick stew checked in. I got a

lot smarter after that. Well, um, again, I've never seen anything in person, but I have I've been on the internet and seeing things like that guy who pete in the coffee apparently every day, but I think that was at an office, not a restaurant. There's like this um laundry list of fingers being found in food. I saw an article I think on like MPR something and it was like just basically the top five times fingers were found in food at restaurants and it happens a lot. Yeah,

just quickly, I should say that there. I feel bad for a restaurant owners sometimes, especially at places like that that it's not like some nice kind of place in town. You can do all you can do, but you still can't account for some little jerk employee that's mad about something, that wants to spit in someone's food on camera. You know you can't just you can't watch everyone the time.

And that's usually what is a case like that, Like this dumb dishwasher kid, he just goes in the walk ins is watch this right, and there's there's I saw, um like there's a case to be made then for not hiring young people. Yeah, you hire people who have like built a a background for themselves, like a career for themselves. Alright, those are called good restaurants. That's the difference. Yeah,

I guess that is the difference. So in a sense that it's very much the owner's fault for being a cheap bastard and hiring people who put their shoed foot in the Brunswick stew Um. Okay, So my point is this, chuck, that the shoed foot fingers in the and and at rbs, like all these little things that that are just horrible and horrific and disgusting would be vastly worse and vastly more frequent were it not for a lone group of people, the thin blue line between us and utter chaos when

it comes to restaurants. The Health inspector, Yeah, this was I'm so excited about this episode. Yeah, it's gonna be a good one. Man, Like, I don't know when you send it over, I was like, all right, but then I started reading and it was interesting and awesome and there's history to it. Yeah, and one of these consumer advocacy shows that we loved to do. Uh, we're doing our little a rough nat or impression. Man, I love that guy. He's the tops. So restaurant health inspectors are

something of a newish invention. They're certainly not really old, UM, because at least in the United States, it wasn't until that book you mentioned, The Jungle was published that people like really sat up and took notice, and Congress acted almost immediately past the Pure Food and Drug Act the next year. That's the impact that ups in Sinclair's The Jungle had, Yeah, rightfully so. And in the book, I mean,

he went undercover. He was a muckraking journalists and God bless him, and he went undercovered to basically just take notes on all the horrible things he saw in the in the meatpacking industry and slaughter houses, and he chronicled all the inhumane things that he saw and the way the animals are treated. But he also saw that in humane ways the workers were treated. But this, his book had this impact and UM and Congress actually acted and

they created the Pure Food and Drug Act. And one of the things that came out of that was UM what came to be known as the Food Code. And the Food Code is basically like, here are the things that you should be doing in your restaurant to prevent from running a foul of the law or um creating food borne illnesses. Yeah, and like previous to the states were kind of taking care of their own health issues

as best they could on their own. But then when when that book came out, people were like, wait a minute, their shipping meat across state line. So the states aren't taking care of it themselves. This meat is going out everywhere. Uh. So it became a federal a federal thing to be regulated, and they made a federal case what they did, and along with the Pure Food and Drug Act, very importantly, the Federal Meetings Action Act was passed in that same year.

And um, because I think everyone, I mean even back then, like if you're grossed out in six then, uh, they weren't as sensitive as we are today. So there was some gnarly stuff going on. Dude, a guy falling into like a hot dog grinder. Come on. So the food code, um, the early food code that is was was sort of the kind of the same stuff that we see today generally. Um, we have refined everything over the years with science as to what's truly dangerous and not and how it gets dangerous.

But even back then they were concerned about like proper meat storage and food storage, and temperatures of things, and the hygiene of employees and and the premises themselves. Yeah, because you know, basically what constitutes good practices hasn't changed all that much. But to to respond to changes that do come about, um, that do change best practices or our understanding of the science of like food board, nillessis the the food Code was republished every year starting in

every two years they updated it and republished it. Uh, and then in two thousand and one they moved it to four years. But that that to me is like that, friends, is the reason we pay taxes, so that there are people who are going around finding out the most cutting edge understanding of how we get sick from foods at restaurants, and then also finding out the exact ways to prevent this from happening, publishing it into a book, and distributing it to the states who then put it into practice.

It takes money to do this kind of thing, but that's why we pay taxes. And the next time somebody tells you that they don't care about government regulations and that we live in a n any state. You remind them of what it would be like if they ate out at a restaurant without this kind of stuff. Those people, we don't need regulating stuff, all right, sir, Then you will be eating eyeball. Right, you'll be eating human eyeball

in your next Frankfurter. I will feed it to you myself. Uh. So, the food Code today, just like the very first one back in UH, is voluntary. UM. It is not federal law. It is still up to those states to go out and write their own rules. It aligns generally with the federal regulations and what the FDA recommends. UH. And then it gets a little more confusing because when it comes down to actual restaurant inspections, there is no federal or

state inspector that comes in there. It's the city or the county who's going to be carrying this out, and they work with the state and then in turn the federal government to kind of all be on the same page. Right. Yeah. I think it's almost kind of like the government's the one who has the funding to go actually look around and survey and find the science and put these best

practices out. But it's the county or the city where the where the the rubber meets the road the shoe, the shoe meets the pavement, more like where the shoe meets the Brunswick stew. That's so right, and not the Brunswick stew. That's like one of the best things I had at Barbecuh. Let's take a break, shall we. I'm gonna go brush my tongue with a toothbrush, okay, and I'll be right back. All right, okay, and we're back and chuck. Let me smell your breath. How's that? Man?

That's nice? Streen? Yeah, if I do detectives at Tom's toothpaste you used no, okay, what toothpaste do you use? I use Uh, I'm using Crest right now? Which one the orange one? No? Yeah? So the the the color of the packaging is orange. But the type of mint it's like called citrus mint. But you would never if you didn't see that, you wouldn't be like, oh, this is citrus mint. It's just its own type of very

pleasant mint flavor sensation. Yeah. I just used the regular uh, not not the white, but I think it's like the blue crests right now. And pro health I think, yeah, yeah, pro health. And then a dude, use the listerine. Now. I've been on that for a solid couple of years because it's six and one six benefits in one. Why are we talking about this? I don't know. Man, we're not even getting paid for that. Maybe mine is Maybe mine is Aqua Fresh. It's either Aqua Fresh or Crest,

which everyone makes. Citrus. Man, that's what I used. But do you remember aim? Oh? Yeah, what was that? So that stuff? I think it's still around. It actually doesn't do anything as far as brushing your teeth goes, as far as toothpaste goes. But remember it came out in three different colors like green, red, and white, and it was just pretty. But it's bad toothpaste. I don't I'm not a big fan of it, but I love looking at it. How about that? I remember that? All right?

So back to food inspection, now that our mouths are clean. Uh. There are usually three kinds of food safety inspections. You got you got your rag. The one that's done in the rag, it's known as a routine inspection, and that's the one where they come in. Might be every six months, might be every year and a half or so, depending on some stuff. We'll get to here in a bit. And that's the one where you go in and you just see the thing on the wall that gives it

the score. That's the one where you're working in the restaurant hunt and the and the owner and the manager freak out. They're like, oh God, no, no, they do the second they walked through the door. Although I will say in New Jersey, where I worked at the store in basking Ridge, New Jersey, we were always great and they took it really seriously. Every time the inspector came by, they were like, come on in, and that's the way it should be. A big shout out to the store

in basking Ridge, New Jersey. Way to go to the store. That place is great and that's how. And they had a restaurant group and they have like six restaurants and they're all done the right way. I don't think you could really have a restaurant group without approaching food inspection and health standards in that way too. Yeah, I mean it's just dumb, not too and from what I saw too. Um we also kind of did you read that mental fass article I sent? Yeah, So one of the things

it's called twelve Secrets of restaurant health inspectors. One of the things they point out is that usually the bigger the chain, So whether it's a restaurant group on up to a global chain like you know, like one of those guys oh wow cheeks, but um, you're probably going to see something close to a hundred every time. And the reason why is because they have a lot of

skin in the game. They have a lot to lose, right if, like they pointed out with Chipotle, like there were one or two locations of Chipotle's where um that some bad cilanto got some people sick with the cool I, but all Chipotle suffered as a result of people just stopped going. They lost hundreds of millions of dollars and um came probably pretty close to to going under there for a little while. And I think they're still definitely calling their way out from under it. So they don't

just rely on state, county, or city health inspectors. They do their own. They hire their own third parties to come in and and carry out health inspections much more frequently than the government's doing, just to make sure that they're up to standards. Yeah, so your your local fast food chain is more likely to be super clean than the mom and pop and in theory, but in my opinion, you're also more likely going to find the kid in the kitchen that goes, hey watch this. Yeah. Yeah, it's

definitely trade off, and that's that's it. Yeah, because it's definitely not to say that, you know, mom and pop places are are inherently unstafe. If it's a family business, you're you have just as much skin in the game as a global global restaurant chain because this is your family's livelihood. So yeah, you're gonna take it seriously. So

getting back. The other two types of inspections real quick, besides the routine are the follow up um investigation where they do say like, all right, you need to fix these things. I'll be back next Thursday, UM, or I'll be back tomorrow depending on what's going on, or I'll shut down your restaurant while you fix the stuff it's so bad. Uh. And then their inspections that are triggered

by a consumer complaints. Yes, that's the one where they like, um, use the bat signal, but instead of a bad it's like a fork in the sky and then the restaurant inspector swoops in. It's like I'm here. I'm here. Everybod aretady calm down. Yeah. So I mentioned that people restaurants will be inspected maybe every six months, maybe every year a year and a half. They are. It's not willy nilly.

They are assessed a risk factor as an establishment by the county or or the you know, whatever local municipality is carrying this out. And that has to do with a bunch of things. Um. Sometimes it's the kind of food. Like if you're serving sushi, you might get inspected a little more sushi shushi because you're serving raw fish. I didn't say sushi that done, shushi that done today. No, no, oh no, that's steep rule. Steep rule. I thought you.

I thought it was my tooth. Um. Or if you're cooking meat or whatever, raw meat, you might get inspected a little more than a deli that just has you know, pre prepared meats and foods. Yeah like that. Those cold cuts are already cooked. It's not like you're they're serving you raw turkey slices like it's already cooked. They're just putting it together onto a sandwich. That's a low risk

um restaurant comparatively speaking. Yeah, you know, always gets me, even though I love a euro is when I see the see the thing on the spit next to the heat lamp rotating around right, I always just think, how how safe is that? I would guess if it's operating in the United States? Safe safe enough. That's the whole point of restaurant inspectors, so that you don't have to

ask that question. That you can look at that and say, somebody who knows what they're doing has inspected that and determined that that is not a threat to my health. Maybe it just creeps me out to look at it. No, I'm with you, I understand. I also want to say, there are some places where you go in and you're like, this is clearly in violation of some health codes. I have no idea how this place is allowed to stay like this, but it's still worth it. And I would

direct you to Ann's, A's ghetto burger right by your house. Yeah, that's just down the street. Yes, have you have you had one? I've never had an ans because I thought that she left and it closed. But it's still going. Is she's still running it? You know? I don't know. She she had been threatening to like retire for twenty years. Or something. But I knew she wanted to get balled out and didn't want to just close it down, So hopefully she was able to retire. That's that's my hope.

But is the Wall Street Journal said it was I think maybe the best hamburger in the United States? The Wall Street Journal ain't lyon. You know, yes, but if you go there, that's like decades worth of Greece just on the event around the or the backsplash, like the stainless steel backsplash or whatever splatter guard behind the griddle, and you're like, just how does she how did she get away with that? And then you take a bite of it, and you're like, oh, because it matters not

at all compared to this burger. Uh, well, maybe she is compliant, because that is the second risk factor involved with how often you're gonna get inspected, which is it, do you have a list of complaints or a record of violations on your record, then you're gonna be on their frequent visitor list, right, you know? Yeah? Yeah, And especially if you've ever been the source of a food born illness, you're on your on your you're a high

risk automatically probably permanently. Yeah, I would think so, and depending on where you are, you know, like you're gonna

get lots of visits after that. Like that's probably aside from maybe people getting shot in your restaurant, a food boarding illness is probably the worst thing that can happen in your restaurant, I would guess, um, and you know, whether you're a new restaurant, well, if you're a new restaurant in particular, I should say I think the standard is is that depending on where you fall as far as what kind of restaurant you are, whether you're a

deli serving cold cuts or a sushi place serving raw seafood, you're assigned like an initial risk assessment, and then depending on that risk assessment, if you're a sushi place, say they're gonna come visit every three months for the first year, or if you're a deli, they might come once every year and a half. And then depending on how you perform in those inspections, those regular routine inspections that are basically predetermined by the type of restaurant you are, that

that schedule can either diminish or increase. So let's say that deli is found to be in violation pretty frequently every eighteen months, they're gonna start getting inspected every twelve months or every six months. Where that sushi place that's getting inspected every three months or six months. If if it's just painfully obvious that they are top notch pros who are taking this quite seriously and never get caught for anything, then that three or six months may end

up turning into a year. Who knows. Yeah, you may have heard reports on the news too that UM food inspectors have racist policies where they will go after ethnic restaurants more often. No, I hadn't heard that, is that right? Yeah, I've seen I've seen reports on stuff like that that they get inspected more frequently if you're like, have an ethnic restaurant, that's pretty rotten. But there is a food safety expert at North Carolina State named Ben Chapman that

says there's really no data to back that up. He said, but there could be biases through consumer complaint systems. Uh. And they did a sort of just a a snapshot from Yelp reviews, which say what you want about Yelp reviews, they're pretty much the worst thing ever, right, But if you look at Yelp reviews, you do a search for food poisoning, and close to seventy of the time they were ethnic restaurants where people complained about food poisoning. So

I see, this food is weird. It is possible recognize it that some bias comes in through that. But that makes sense. Then chuck like if if if yelp is um a proxy for the number of times somebody might call in um a complaint. That's one of the ways that the food inspector goes out to inspect a restaurant is when somebody the public, said, you know, calls and says something or complaints. UM. So I mean that that makes utter, in complete sense. Um, have you ever called

and complained about a restaurant? Have you ever called the health department? I never have either, and they're actually after researching this article, I was like, there, I can think of it. At least one time when I could have and should have called just got undercooked chicken and um, you mean I both got very sick for like the whole weekend, and I kept calling this place like like, what are you guys gonna do about? Is you have

to do something? And um, they just got less and less interested the more frequently I called him by the by like the fourth or fifth time, was like, we're still suffering. I just wanted to let you know we're laying around throwing up. And they didn't do anything about it. There was no, um, we're sorry that that. I think they actually didn't believe me. Maybe, But now that I've read this, so I'm like, I totally should have called the health department on those guys. It was in Atlanta,

I think I remember that. Actually we got so we were sick for an entire week, yes, right across from where we used to work actually, and they could not have cared less. And that's what ticked me off. Oh you were calling the restaurant over, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought you called the health inspector over. But now now I'm like, why wouldn't Why didn't we just call

it health inspector? Now I would call for sure, now that I've done this research, because it's not like like what you're doing is helping other people from from the before, from the same fate befalling. Yeah, you're not being a rat, right, which is another thing that health inspectors look out for. All right, well let's talk about that. When you when this is how that this goes down. They're unannounced visits.

Like I said, so I've worked at UM. I've worked it I don't know, like probably four or five places over the years, and two of them were pretty bad. The aforementioned barbecue place and then where I worked in college wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. It was a typical like college town Mexican joint UM, but it wasn't like the super professional other restaurants that I've worked at. But in those first two places, I remember when the

restaurant inspector walked through the door, a panic set in. UH. Invariably the one of the like the GM or whoever the manager was, would immediately confront UH in a nice not confront but greet the person and send you know, the understanding was someone go back to the kitchen and tell everyone that the inspector is here. And judging from that Mental Floss article you sent, that's exactly how it works.

And for that reason, the very first thing a good health inspector does is kind of barged through there and say I'm going straight into the kitchen right the second right, because they know what's going on, right, that's they have to or else a whole bunch of violations get covered up really quickly, very quickly, And so in that mental Flass article, basically they said they needed to do like a a brisk like run walk through the kitchen as

fast as they could. But it's also you you scals, like what do you do and like just stand there and freeze. That's what they should do, is be like everybody phrase and then like have their finger and thumb in the shape of a gun because I don't think they're allowed to actually carry guns. Well, this one health inspector in the Mental Flass things said, we want to see the things that won't be there in another three

to four minutes. But that's the thing. But I mean it could be anything like there's there's like, um, if you are sitting there making food and you have like a cup of coke, right, you're not supposed to have that there or in your cell phone in the kitchen. It's another big one. I'll bet that is probably the

most frequent violation today. They're covered in poop. Do you ever see something like if I have you ever just stopped and looked at people on the street like with their phones, like they'll just be stopped mid something like they have like a shovel like propped up against their their shoulder, just looking at their phone with their mouth hanging open, and it's like crazy, we're turning into like a society of zombies. Man, how do you stare at

your phone? I've seen you do that. You do it in a smarter looking like I do the thing where I'm like stroking my chin thoughtfully. I've got like one eyebrow arch Alright, So the first thing they inspect, obviously the kitchen. The the manager or the owner or whoever is there on point is with the inspector the whole time, because they're saying like hey, like little things like that catchup bottles disgusting, Like why don't you go ahead and have someone clean it up? And I won't dock your point,

but just get it clean. And the guy wipes it down and he's like, no, that brand. It's so we get some hinds in heresgusting. But the first thing they inspect or the dynamic areas, which are the kitchen food preparation areas. UM basically anywhere where there's food actively out is the first place they'll go, right, That's that's the static area dynamics. The dynamic okay, and then you start

with the hundred points. By the way, I don't know if we mentioned that, which I think is kind of optimistic. It's saying like, I want to believe the best in you. So everybody starts with a hundred and then we start deducting from there. Yeah, then it just gets sad. So Um. One of the first things they're looking for is employee hygiene because remember what you mentioned, like way back and when the Food and Drug Act was created, the Food

Code was first established. Um, there were a lot of basic tenants that were put forth back then, and one of them was, you're the people who cook the food need to be clean as a whistle. And that's one of the big things that the health inspectors looking for, like are they wearing gloves, which, by the way, is not to say that if an employees wearing gloves that

you're totally covered. Um, the gloves are supposed to be a fail safe to good hand washing, So you want them to be washing their hands very frequently and then wearing gloves on top of that, but then on top of that not doing things like like using their cell phone with the gloves on because you've just automatically contaminated them and totally defeated the purpose of using gloves at that point. Right, So there's a lot of hygiene things

that are are being taken into account. But how do you how do you tell whether people are washing their hands when you're just walking into a kitchen. Of course they're going to wash their hands in front of you and the way that they're supposed to be, but how do you know they're doing it routinely? Chuck? Well, yeah, and we should say that there is a way you're supposed to wash the hands. You don't rinse them off and just dry them with the towel that's sitting by

the sink or just below on them. You rents, You put on the soap, you scrub for twenty seconds, then you dry off with a one use towel and good old, unsustainable made out of tree paper towel. Uh yeah, Or if you're a really fancy restaurant, you can just have like cashmere towels laying around as long as you faw them away afterwards. Right, you have to go away. But you're a little trick. I know where you were leading.

How you can tell is this one very crafty restaurant inspector in the middle Flass article said, they go in the first thing they do because it takes them a couple of hours at a just sort of a normal size restaurant, um, four or five hours at a big hotel restaurant. He said, he puts an X on the paper towels, and if he goes back at the end of his inspection and that X is still in the paper towel, then he knows hands are not being washed. Right,

very sneaking, pretty clever. Yeah, uh so, I guess we just gave it away though, So now all the people are going to go check their paper towel rolls. There are other ways. Um, yeah, that was just a setup to nudge them into the actual way he's telling, like wash your hands. Um. Food is another big one too, Right. You want to make sure that the food is being

properly stored and properly cooked. And apparently there is a danger zone um between I think like zero and a hundred and forty that you want to hit or that you want to stay outside of. So basically you want your food, especially like um, raw meat, to be stored at a temperature frozen, right or else kept at forty

degrees fairheight four degrees celsius or below for fridges. Um, And then when you cook it, you have to cook it to at least a hundred and sixty degrees internal temperature for beef, pork, all those guys, and then a hundred forty five for fish. And if a restaurant is not doing that, that's a big that's a big one, as we'll see. Yeah, I mean, the best way to think about food storage is without getting into the specific temperatures. Is if it's supposed to be cold or frozen, it

should be cold or frozen. If it's supposed to be it should be hot. Is that middle ground is where you're in big trouble exactly. They talked about lukewarm being the big enemy, right, not not that's never good lukewarm. I'm trying to think of a time when lukewarm is preferable with anything. Um, it just sounds gross. I like

my food really hot too. Yeah. Like, that's the one thing I will send something back is if it's was clearly made a little earlier than the rest of the party at the table and it's sort of lukewarm, I might no, man, I want I want steam coming off this thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah they do, and then they're like, oh, I guess you want a little spit on that too. Apparently soup should be uh Like, the way you reheat things is a big deal because obviously that Brunswick sto.

You don't just throw it out every night. You put it back in the walk in so some jerk can step in it. But when you bring soups and brawls back uh to heat, you have to reboil them entirely right from their refrigerated state, which makes sense, but that's never very good for um food. If it's already prepared once you reboil it, that's that's probably you're just gonna want to throw that away then, yeah, man, it toughens

everything up, or else it overcooks it. It's already been cooked once, so when you bring it to a boil, you're really cooking it again. And for food boorn illnesses, that's a good way to treat it, but it doesn't necessarily make for the most appetizing food. All Right. I don't know if I agree with that, but that's all right, that's what I'm going with. Uh, frozen meat, you don't just say, hey, Jimmy, throw that frozen bird out on the table and leave it there until this evening. Right.

But you don't just leave food out to thaw there. There are proper ways of following and bringing things back to the correct temperature. Right. And then so let's say you have a place where you're cutting up that thowed chicken that was properly thought um, and then you set the knife down and somebody else picks it up and

they start cutting lettuce with it. That's cross contamination. That is extremely dangerous because as you know, very few people cook their lettuce before they eat it in a salad. It's raw and so now it has raw chicken juice on the lettuce that you're eating raw and uncooked, and you can die from that. UM. So cross contamination is a big one they look for. They also UM it can be a little more simple, like with something like

UM silverware. From what I saw, if the silverware is dirty or smudgy, UM, that is a big problem because that means usually that the whole kitchen is dirty. There's a lot of that's like a big red flag that UM. Apparently health health inspectors will will tell you that if the silver ware is dirty. It usually is indicative of just a dirty restaurant in general. Um. And I've always heard I don't know if it's an urban legend or not, but uh, you know, like the just the plastic soda

cups that like a lot of restaurants will have. Um, have you ever heard that it's not possible for them to get to the temperature needed to kill any bacteria on them, because they'll melt otherwise, so that when you drink out of them, they've not really been sanitized from before. I have not heard that. But as as someone who has worked as a dishwasher, you don't say, well, I'm going to watch these things that this temperature you just

throw everything through there. Yeah, you don't have any choice in what temperatures. It's all prescribed for you. You're just basically putting them on the tray and sliding them through, pulling the door down, and then it washes them and you lift the door up and pull them out. Yes, and I will say one of my dreams that is to have one of those in my home. Those I can't remember what they're called, but they're wonderful. It's pretty great. Yeah,

it just watches everything like super fast. So that's the dynamic areas, right. There's also the static areas, where it's things like, um, well, the dish washing area actually apparently is a static area doesn't change very much. Um where you store cleaning products that kind of stuff. I guess you get points deducted if you're cleaning products or your toxic chemicals are not in there marked original package, because you could they can be mistaken for oil and vinegar

or something like that. Yeah, and they're gonna check. The static areas include a lot of things that you don't think would even fall into the purview of a restaurant inspector. They're gonna look at your HVAC systems and your bents and your smoke detectors. Uh, they're gonna look at your dining room and the floors and the ceilings, and your ceiling vans and your dumpster behind and then your grease trap.

Like they look at everything, right, which is good. And another one that they take a look at that I think is probably a big problem for restaurants in a lot of ways are ice machines. Um. The there's a lot of parts to ice machines that are out of view. This thing scared me in mental flaws. Now that can like grow mold pretty easy, and not just the ice machine right where they're like scooping ice out, which is another thing too, Like there better be an ice scoop right, Um,

it can grow mold in the ice machine. But also those shoots where ice comes out of like a like a beverage dispenser, those are usually serviced by the company that that makes the beverages that it's dispensing, and so it would be up to that company to clean those out, which means that they get even less attention than the

rest of the restaurant. So the next time you're getting like ice out of beverage dispenser, like get your flashlight out of your pocket and look up there, uh and see if you see any mold and then just raise holy hell if you do. Yeah. And I'm not a big fan of the serve yourself soft drink stations anyway, for you know, out there with the public. I don't think the public should ever have access to something. That's why, well that's not the reason, but buffets are just so

gross and creepy. I haven't been to a buffet, and good lord, I don't know twenty years, but you should the thought of a buffet. I know they have the sneeze guard, but uh, people like scooping in and serving themselves their own food from a drough is so weird and gross an archaic that I can't believe people still

do that. Well. I mean also, like even if you're using like a spoon, like a serving spoon to scoop something out, so did the person before you, right, And that means you're touching the safe serving spoon and then going back and using your hands to go eat. So you just touched whatever the other person had on their hands, and now you're coming in contact with your mouth. It's

a flawed system, for sure. It is, because what you're saying is, I'm going to count on the three hundred people that have eaten here today before me are all completely hygienic. All their hands have been washed. Yeah, Timothy, poop hands isn't among them. No one did a single gross thing, like if a tater tot fell off the spoon, flicked it back in with their finger, Like, no one did anything wrong at all. I I just no way, not even like whole foods or someplace. Those are all

gross to me. Oh yeah, whole foods would count with that too. Huh, Although I do like a build your own salad thing every once in a while. That's the exception good salad bar. Yeah, it's tough to turn down. I'm with. Well, let's take a break, think a little more about salads, and we'll be right back. All right, we're back, Charles. Let's talk about point deductions. A. Yes, let's remember we said that restaurant inspectors are very optimistic and they start out with a hundred. It just goes

down from there. And again, you know, since these are done like city by city or county by county, like

everybody has like their own methods or whatever. But usually, and I think the f d a UM has pointed out, like there are five things that you're really looking for, like five general categories UM improper UM storage of food as far as temperature goes, inadequately cooked food, UM, equipment that's contaminated, sources that are unsafe, uh, that are an unsafe supply of the ingredients, right, so like if it turns out like the goat is coming from their buddies farm,

that might be a problem. And then personal hygiene of the people who work there, right, And so depending on some of those, especially if there's multiple ones of these, these are big ones, um, they will probably be a high priority type one or critical violation any of those. Yes, And then there's also other ones where like this is not that big of a deal, but it's definitely something

that needs to be paid attention to. Those fall after those usually and it can be anything from like a dentic can that could conceivably contain botuli is um but definitely hasn't been proven to contain botulism being thrown away, to um, there being a hole in the screen door that's left open for some reason. Yeah, and these uh.

As far as deducting individual points that you'll see on the wall when you walk in and if you don't look at that piece of paper when you walk into a restaurant, I don't know what's going on in your brain.

You should always do that. Um. But like a static violation like hey, there were some chairs that had bad legs, your ceiling fan was pretty dusty, those will be like a point each, maybe a couple of points for a minor infraction like you're cleaning product, like I found a roach, you know, the the chef has a cell phone in

the kitchen. That's a couple of points all the way up to four and five points, and those that's when you're talking about your your fridge is broken and it is not up to temperature, and everything in there is at risk, and that's when they can actually shut you

down until you get it fixed. Yeah, which I got the impression from this article that that is it's a rarity that the health inspector wants to air on the side of the restaurant staying open and solving everything as quickly as it can, while also it's business not suffering unnecessarily, so if you're if your restaurant gets shut down temporarily, like that violation was significant enough that that people were at an immediate risk of getting sick from visiting your restaurant, exactly. Yeah,

it's a big deal. In other words, as it's as big a deal as you would think. Yeah, but with those point deductions, if you go in and you see like a seventy two on a restaurant score sheet, it's probably not twenty eight individual small violations, right. There are probably some four and five pointers in there, and you should probably think about eating there or you know it

says in the art in this article. You can go to the website and really break down because those aren't for the public to necessarily be able to digest easily. But um, if you do look at them, if you can get close to them, you can actually look and see the little category for each thing. Um. Sometimes behind the register they may not like you poking around. Well, the health health departments usually put them on the web these days. Yeah, that's I'll saying, Like, you can investigate online,

but in the restaurant itself, it is marked. It's you know, a bunch of tiny little letters and categories, and you can give it a look. And uh, you know, as long as I wouldn't spend too much time there, like, just go by that initial score. And if you're really like, yeah, I gotta see what those eighteen points were deducted for, I would just turn around and walk out, right, especially

if there's an identical place, like right across the street. Um. But that is a pretty good point because when you think about it, most people just see that score prominently displayed, whether it's like an A or a B or a C, or like a eighty five or a ninety eight or whatever. Um. And it's not really meant to be shorthand for the public. It's I mean, I guess it isn't a way where it's like, hey, buddy, you're you're really taking a gamble

here at like seventy um. But when it's really high up, it does seem to be kind of an indicator like this one's a okay. In my book, that's not really what the restaurant uh inspection report is supposed to be. It's supposed to be a lot more granular than that.

And so to really tell whether you're running a risk at eating in a restaurant or not, you actually do have to go to the trouble of looking up what the violations were and then even then judging for yourself, because short of the health inspector deciding to shut the restaurant down and making the decision for you that you can't go there, they're not they're not saying like don't

eat here. Like if it passes, if it passes inspection enough to stay open, then as far as the county Health Department is concerned, it's good enough for you to be eating there. But that might not really jibe with your own definition. So to get that that information. You have to go find out what they're why points were deducted. Yeah, and you can't. Uh, it's either the mental plus or our own article point out that just because someplace has a bad rating doesn't mean they haven't fixed things and

it's fine now. And just because as a great rating doesn't mean they're not in violation that day. There. These inspectors come every six months to a year for a couple of hours during a lunch shift, and it is a snapshot of what occurred on that day. Right, So there's no like fail safe for a consumer. You just gotta you know, did the best you can, cross your fingers. You just roll the dice and everything's okay in there, or just cook at home and boil everything including your

lettuce boiled lettuce delicious. What oh, I didn't know if I was missing on and then you got anything else on restaurant inspections. Um. Just this one more little tidbit from Mental Floss that I thought it was pretty great is that this one restaurant inspector said that he can smell cockroaches in the air at this point. Yeah, that's a real problem with cockroaches, though, don't you think to

be able to smell. I guess it'd be an infestation, is what he's He said, you can walk in, take a deep breath, and he said it's kind of a nutty, oily smell that you after years on the job, I can identify it. It's like I still get hungry every time I smell it. I got a lot of roaches in my house right now, and it's really pissing me off. A clean house. You know, it's not gross, it's just this summer was just real, kind of muggy and dank. And do you have a lot of cardboard boxes in

your attic or basement? No? I don't know where they're coming from, Like we see him outside all over the place, so I don't. Maybe it's at Swale Pond from Perman Culture episode. Maybe. Yeah. The Perman Culture lady was like, I forgot to tell you you're gonna have roaches. It's the only new thing, right, I don't know. Man, good good luck and god speed, though, go find the most sustainable way to treat it. I'll be interested to hear you come up with. Well, so far it's been the

flip flap method. Oh poor roaches. No. Uh, If you want to know more about cockroaches or restaurant health inspections or flip flops. You can type those words in the search bar a house of works dot com. And I said that, which means it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call this a great, gross way to finish this gross ish podcast. Excellent. Hey, guys, wanted to regale

you with the story of how you two contributed. My fantastic relationship my wonderful girlfriend last summer and follows traveling across the country, camping, going to national parks, and I wound up in moab Utah at canyon lands and arches and met a smart, fun girl at a brewery and we made a date to go hiking. The next day, I picked her up and we went on a wonderful

little hike and disaster struck. It turns out months of cheddar brought worst and beer wasn't great for my digestive system, and I felt horrible, and I had an inescapable urge to take the Browns to the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, I was miles away from a leif and I ran out of excuses to keep stopping and standing still for a moment. Hey, look at that arch again. Oh uh, so I had to tell her the horrible truth on our first date,

and I was sure it would ruin it. Eventually, I made my way to a bathroom, shoved some poor people aside, and uh safely made it back to town. But I was horribly embarrassed and sure I had ruined everything. On the way back to town, she asked if she could put a podcast on, and she played me your episode about poop. No nice, how about that? She's got a good sense of human great sense of humor. I've never been as happy to hear two men describing fecal matter.

At that point, I knew anyone could spend a date almost pooping in their pants into an excuse to share their podcasts favorite As a keeper, we've been together over a year now. We love listening to your new episodes while we hike in camp and uh and poop. I guess they've got to remember the love seat that Saturday Night Live commercial. It was like the two toilets facing each other's You could hold hands while you poop. Exactly.

I couldn't be happy to find a new favorite thing to listen to and a wonderful new girlfriend at the same time. So I want to thank you guys if you ever get back to Denver, maybe next year. We don't know yet. UM I'll be buying tickets as soon as I hear the announcement. That is from Tom, and he said, if you do read this in the air, please give a shout out to Alice. Nice Tom and Alice. Yeah, way to go kids. Uh, thanks for writing in Tom

nice story. Uh. If you want to get in touch with this like Tom did, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast, join us on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, send us an email to Stuff Podcast the house. Stuff works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. M