Food Safety Talk Don Schaffner and Ben Chapman

Don and Ben are joined by surprise guest Paul Breslin from Rutgers. Paul is a geneticist who works in the area of taste and when he heard that Don had a podcast he had to be on it. After Don plays his favorite, but Ben's least favorite game of "guess the guest," where Ben almost got there, they start in on food, food chemistry, genetics and evolution. The guys talk about the ubiquity of fermentation in human foods, cooking, why foods taste the way they do, the evolution of taste receptors. They also get into questions like what does eating pure DNA or RNA taste like. They talk about hot foods/spices, electronic noses for pathogens and spoilage and some other stuff.

The guys start the episode talking about their pets and get a bit into the world of productivity. Don tells Ben about watching Shogun and then they get into some feedback and talk about some of the interesting offers they get. They talk about pathogens on lettuce, how little we really know about morels and some pesticides on produce stuff. The guys then talk about a couple of listicles about food safety and other risks on cruises.

In this somewhat short episode the guys start talking about email addresses getting claimed away from Apple and their semi-hard outs.
The guys go on to play a game of twelve unexpected ways you can get food poisoning (and Don lost badly). Ben and Don talk about highly pathogenic avian influenza and its impacts on the food system/food safety. The episode ends on a deep dive into followup from a Risky or Not episode and probabilities of getting sick from eating a dish made with (at least) raw chicken everyday.

This was a shorter one with the guys having some scheduling issues. The episode opens with Don and Ben talking about The guys go on to talk about how they are probably cleaning their water bottles incorrectly, according to the Internet. They talk about some criminal charges hitting a cheese maker who was linked to a Listeria outbreak and do a bit of a deep dive on soft cheeses The show ends with a couple of quick items on consuming a lot of Vitamin D, vegetables in Thailand and the risks of being inside of a hockey arena that's not related to eating gum off of the ice.

Ben and Don start the episode with various topics ranging from notable alumni of Rutgers and Enloe High School in Raleigh to productivity/Getting Things Done. The food safety conversation moves to lead contaminated cinnamon in applesauce and a great New York Times article that provides a case study on the outbreak. The guys then go into a new law requiring bars in North Carolina to meet the Food Code requirements if serving food. They do a bit of followup on chicken washing and the show ends with a discussion on ultra processed foods.

Don and Ben start the show talking about some recent guest pitches they've received (and a what sounds like a fun fusion restaurant). They go on to talk about watching Astrid and Curb Your Enthusiasm and get into the food safety content by Ben plating a message he received from his grocery store. This leads to some recall communication talk. Ben masterfully gets Don to do some homework for him (and disguises it as a fun game, which it was not). The guys go on to talk about vibrio infections, the impacts of outbreaks on Chipotle and whether a toilet lid matters when it comes to the aerosolization of poop particles when flushing a toilet. They talk about agricultural education in classrooms and get into some followup on dry cleaning, .orgs and fried rice syndrome.