lucky_bee
RBF expert
I'm not going to go back to the way we ate in the 50s-70s. That was the beginning of the processed food era and where we started some pretty unhealthy views on diet, processed foods, and how and what we consumed. Also, health code standards were certainly a little different back then: if people were getting sick from eating out, it most likely came from a cook or server with poor hygeine/food prep habits because those were not nearly as regulated as they are today.
Research (CDC) shows you're actually more likley to get food poisoning from fresh produce and eggs. There's no cook step process when we're eating our veggies raw to decrease the contamination (salad, salsa, guacamole, etc. - that's half of your options at Chipotle btw) and we're definitely consuming way more fresh produce (America - as a whole) than we did even from just a few years ago. Hello, Farm to Table movement. Obviously this increases everyone's risk to pathogens and bacteria hiding in our fresh produce. To put it simply, lettuce doesn't come chopped and bagged from some super-ultra sterile facility like McDonald's, the whole lettuce head goes from Farm, to a Chipotle distributing plant, to local Chipotle's, where it's then washed and chopped. Maybe I'm weird. I'd rather take my chances with a fresher product, knowing the risks, than continue to consume months-old produce that's been washed and bagged with god-knows what to keep it preserved longer.
Also, hi...the internet. Now we know of every. single. time. someone ####s their brains out after some Chipotle. AND also, hey...people that don't understand the difference between food poisoning and having a couple bad ####s and throwing a fuss about food poisoning regardless of the medical symptoms. And lastly, herd mentality: we complain about it all the time on here. If a couple dozen people hear about their local Chipotle having a food poisoning situation, now you have a couple dozen freaking out that they swear too they had food poisoning, obviously because their #### was slightly smellier than normal. And then you have a chain reaction.
I'm not saying disregard these cases at Chipotle, but as the unoffocial guinea pig that took this new beloved Farm to Table movement and made it a chain restaurant, you really have to know and understand all the new criteria, food handling/prep, safety that now comes in to play with this F2T movement, and realize it's actually an increased risk all around, but since Chipotle is a national chain, we're more likely to hear about it than your non-chain local F2T restaurant.
