What really gets me about the label, and others I have seen recently: The warning about heating the thing to an internal temperatures of 160 F.

Do they really expect me to jam a thermometer in each burrito or egg roll I microwave?

They then hid the tea and coffee cups before they left. What microbiological safety that was supposed to be for I don't know.

The opinion in the fields of medicine and food safety seemed to be that he was thinking the whole world was like his petri-dishes, full of yummy food for his bugs, kept at an ideal temperature, and unsullied by competing bacteria. He was seeing the mats of his healthy, thriving, adopted bacterial children, and forgetting what happens to food when it gets eaten.

As with so much of medicine, the dose matters, and after a dose of stomach acid, the bacteria he found in food had to take on an environment designed to break cell walls, while competing with the voracious natives, which cheerfully help us digest food.

It take a pretty big dose of bacteria to get past those defences.

There was a food scientist at my own university (Alberta) who was putting out scare stories like that for a while. Drove me batty. She figured that if the turkey had been out of the oven for two hours, you had to throw away whatever you hadn't eaten or refrigerated immediately. So any serious family dinner, you had to toss ALL the leftovers. So utterly, needlessly wasteful!

And the articles were all so serious, take-care-of-your-health and this-is-what-the-experts-say...

Thankfully I haven't heard anything in a couple of years.

I always went on the theory that if pizza that had sat out all night didn't make me sick when I ate it cold for breakfast the next day, then the whole notion of leftovers being dangerous was quite silly.

(Also, while getting salmonella is no joke, the sheer quantity of raw cookie dough I have consumed in my life spells out how very unlikely it is to be found in raw eggs.)

So I'm pretty sure it was a liability issue, not a guarding-their-perquisites issue, but if they'd been told to offer a longer service window they should have planned how to make that possible.

*It's not that we don't acknowledge the theoretical risks, it that we are more aware of the actual size of the risks, safety margins etc.

Maybe I've just toughened myself up by doing this for years, but I really think my mother's horror of *gasp* warm mayonnaise was silly.

When I'm making food for other people, I'm a LOT more careful.

And, as a side issue, folks; is it really necessary to imply bad motives if people do something that displeases you? I have no idea if the caterers at DCB's wedding were being honest or not. But, must one assume they were lying about their motives? And, isn't it possible that they put cups and saucers away because their bosses told them to? (In spite of clients wishes to the contrary).

We have become so cynical in so many ways, both big and small, that we cannot take anything people say at face value. This a very sad thing.

They didn't "do something that displeases you", they refused to do the job they had been contracted for - and tried to hide that behind rules and regulations.

The experience was sufficiently bad that I told my stepmother afterwards that, if I ever had a large party, I wasn't going to have it catered, I was going to hire a couple of chest freezers, do all the cooking gradually over several weeks, then hire/borrow a couple extra microwaves so I could heat everything on the day. She reassured me that the attitude of this particular set of staff was not typical.

But then, given that people don't seem capable of realising that "90% fat free!" means "10% fat" rather than "there is some fat in the other 10%" ...

Then there's the discount clothing store's claim: "Everything always up to 60% less". Yeah, like that really means anything.

Those are some small damn pizzas there.

The thing that used to bring a smile to my face with all the frozen lunches I heated was the text down in the corner:
SERVING SUGGESTION
KEEP FROZEN

(Not without you give me a wooden stick to eat it on, pal!)

The Freschetta pizzas I see in my freezer case still come in 1-inch square boxes...

Yeah, this time it leaves them in.

Isn't Freschetta the artist famous for his portrayal of Conan the Barbarian?
("That's Frazetta, Serge.")
Oh.
Nevermind.

Linkmeister @2: Yes, I liked the mental image of teeny tiny pizza boxes.

Kip W @: "SERVING SUGGESTION.
KEEP FROZEN" - Lovely juxtaposition! I also love it when it says something like "Keep frozen. Heat before eating" - Well, make up your mind, which? *Sigh* What's wrong with the more accurate "Store frozen. Heat before eating."

If the rate of salmonella infection in eggs is one in 10,000, then you in your kitchen might handle a hundred or so eggs in a month -- and an opportunity for problems arises once every hundred months or so, every eight years.

A commercial kitchen might deal with 5,000 eggs a month, easily -- and run into the same opportunity every two months.

dcb @ 23: I personally enjoy "Do not consume pizza without cooking." I know they mean you can't just thaw it and eat it, but I always have a vision of someone gnawing on a whole frozen-solid pizza. (Which, to be fair, I am certain a college student has tried at some point.)

Linkmeister @ 27: !!! :-)

If I was writing that, I think it would be safe to leave "than before" implied. Especially since when you are writing for commercial packaging, I would imagine that every word counts.

IMHO, the weirdness in "This package contains 30% less packaging" is lies mainly in poor word choice not in lack of accuracy.

The use of "package"/"packaging" has a redundant feel that smacks of bureaucratic love of repetition and passive tense. That's why I suggested using "material" instead of packaging. Using that word would make the sentence shorter and easier to parse (though perhaps a bit too Canadian/European-sounding for us Mericans).

And yes I am a technical writer. :)

Rob

The problem is that could be misinterpreted as implying "this package contains 30% less stuff inside". (Obviously not something that you'd expect people to advertise loudly, but you also don't want your advertising to be risibly misinterpreted, either.)

I think the real problem is "contains", which when applied to packages, boxes, etc., more often refers to the, well, contents, rather than to the packaging itself. That's maybe also part of the problem with the existing text ("Wait -- the package contains packaging? Like, instead of food?").

So maybe: "This package is made with 30% less material" ?
Or: "Packaging made with 30% less material"
Or even: "Packaging contains 30% less material" (Even fewer characters! The copy writing budget is saved!)

"30% MORE!! than 24-ounce size"

Too bad the Skiffy Channel doesn't tell us which kind of greater is to be thought up.

They're just trying to remind us of how cheesy their programming is.

* Than a tub of lard.

Actually, "This package contains..." sounds like someone who was used to writing texts intended for regulatory compliance has now been assigned to write marketing text, and hasn't yet gotten the hang of this new assignment.

It isn't only a total dietary intake issue, though that must be part of it. There is an effect on reuptake of cholesterol excreted in the bile. This recycling mechanism is also how Benecol and similar cholesterol-lowering spreads are supposed to work. Vytorin, too, for that matter.

Beef fat is suet (see spotted dick recipe); pork fat is lard, much softer. Neither is permitted in strict kosher households, as you observed. The best beef suet is the fat around the kidneys, it's specifically part of the sacrifice. Lev 3:3-5:

From the fellowship offering you are to bring a food offering to the LORD: the internal organs and all the fat that is connected to them, 4 both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver, which you will remove with the kidneys. 5 Then Aaron’s sons are to burn it on the altar on top of the burnt offering that is lying on the burning wood; it is a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the LORD.

Raw beef fat is suet. Rendered beef fat is tallow. (At least that's how it's reported in the WSJ commodities price reports.)