So much for the cold-chain.

13 Investigates – the voice of Indiana – found beef, pork, chicken, eggs, milk, and produce being transported in hot trucks that do not have proper refrigeration.

"If it's happening here in Indiana," it's happening in Texas and North Carolina and California," said Capt. Wayne Andrews, who oversees Indiana State Police's Motor Carrier Enforcement Division. "This is not just an Indiana problem and we need to do more to address it."

"It's just not working properly and it had approximately a 94.7 degree reading at the time of the traffic stop," explained ISP Trooper Ashley Hart, standing next to a hot truck she pulled over along Interstate 65 near Lafayette. The truck was carrying raw meat, eggs and produce from a warehouse in Chicago to restaurants in Indianapolis.

"It's absolutely disgusting," she added.

13 Investigates first exposed the problem in July as state police partnered with local health departments to keep spoiled food from hot trucks off Hoosier dinner plates. Since then, the danger has not gone away.

"The problem is growing," said Andrews, whose motor carrier inspectors have found more hot trucks than they ever expected.

Last week, on a 92-degree day, state police stopped a food truck heading northbound on Interstate 69 near Muncie. The truck's refrigeration unit was broken and inside, eggs, pork, shrimp, and fish were found to be 66 degrees. Food safety inspectors from the Delaware County Health Department say that is both dangerous and illegal.

Indiana's effort to crack down on hot trucks is about to get some national exposure. After seeing WTHR's investigation, NBC's TODAY Show has decided to highlight this problem as a national issue. TODAY sent a crew to Indiana last week and will feature a special report on hot trucks September 22 -- this Thursday morning. You can see the report on Channel 13.

Sorenne has been going to full-time daycare – she doesn’t like that term so we call it school – since arriving in Australia. At 2-and-a-half years old, we knew she was getting bored with us, and needed to be hanging out with other kids.

The kids all have to wear sunhats, and high-powered sunscreen is applied liberally, not the mild stuff used in North America.

Amy’s been making a lunch every day, and I’m starting to help out. Today is was leftover spaghetti, cheese, a yoghurt (anything pre-packaged is wildly expensive, with those little yoghurts going for about $1.20 each) and apple slices. Everything is labeled Sorenne, and it goes into the fridge as soon as we arrive. Seems like a good system.

But after dealing with the tyranny and boredom of school lunches for about 12 years with the four Canadian daughters, I’m well aware of the challenges: most schools don’t have fridges for kids to use. Standard advice is to pack food with ice packs or use cooler bags, but that may not be enough.

Researchers at the University of Texas, Austin, measured the temperatures of food in bag lunches 90 minutes before children at air-conditioned Texas child-care centers were scheduled to eat them.

Ninety percent of the lunches were in insulated bags. Even so, the results were disgusting.

Less than 2 percent of the perishable items were in what the researchers deemed a safe temperature zone: less than 39.2 degrees or more than 140 degrees. Only 14 of 618 items — they focused on meats, dairy products and vegetables — in lunches with one ice pack were a safe temperature. Multiple ice packs weren’t much better: Just 5 of 61 items were safe.

Unsafe temperatures allow bacteria to grow, increasing the odds that kids will get a nasty foodborne illness, Fawaz Almansour, lead author of the new study, said.

The study, published Monday in Pediatrics, did not look at how many kids actually got sick. The important thing, Almansour said, is that their lunches put them at risk for a long list of bugs. Children younger than four are especially susceptible to foodborne illnesses.

The authors wrote, “These results indicate an urgent need for parents and childcare personnel to be educated in safe food practices.”

As usual, there were no recommendations for how this education was to magically happen.
 

Chef Ramsey’s kitchen rage is topped only by Donald Trump’s hair, rants, and famous line “you are fired.”

The final challenge on Ramsey’s latest show was to determine which of two chefs stays one more week by cooking three steaks each, one rare, one medium, and one well done. As one of the chefs uses a tip sensitive digital thermometer to check temperatures, Chef Graham Elliot comments something along these lines – every time he uses the thermometer, he lets those juices flow out.

According to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, medium steaks should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160º F, well done 170º F and rare is not listed, but it’s usually around 120º-125º F (no one really knows). Four out of the six steaks looked pretty much the same (right, exactly as shown), so we’ll never know what the temperatures were.

When I ask for my steak to be rare, get it to at least 120º F and don’t even think about using the cheek or hand tests.

Is cooking food until it’s ‘piping hot’ a science-based recommendation?

The Food Standards Agency has published its updated Strategy to 2015, Safer food for the nation with five core principles:

• putting the consumer first;
• openness and transparency;
• science and evidence-based;
• acting independently; and,
• enforcing food law fairly.

And six core outcomes:

• foods produced or sold in the UK are safe to eat;
• imported food is safe to eat;
• food producers and caterers give priority to consumer interests in relation to food;
• consumers have the information and understanding they need to make informed choices about where and what they eat;
• regulation is effective, risk-based and proportionate, is clear about the responsibilities of food business operators, and protects consumers and their interests from fraud and other risks; and,
• enforcement is effective, consistent, risk-based and proportionate and is focused on improving public health.

Sounds great. But what are the details?

Of the estimated £135m annual budget, £20m is allocated to ensuring consumers have information necessary to make informed food choices, with priorities for improving public awareness about good food hygiene at home; increasing visible information on hygiene standards when consumers eat out or shop; and improving public awareness of healthy eating.

For that amount of money, the science-based FSA could do much better than telling citizens their meat is safe when it’s “piping hot” and “the juices run clear.”

Piping hot is not science or evidence-based; color is a lousy indicator of safety; using a tip-sensitive digital thermometer is the only safe way to determine if food has reached a safe temperature.

FSA also states “The strategy is written in a way that consumers can understand and explains the range of work we do across the UK.“

It’s not clear whether anyone asked consumers if they could understand, but FSA did state one of its main priorities was to “improve public awareness and use of messages about good food hygiene practice at home.”

Use of messages improves nothing; using practices recommended in messages may translate into fewer sick people, but those messages need to be evidence-based.