does anyone else suffer from food safety fears?

[cofo]

so, i have a food safety fear, and it's been progressing over the years, slowly but surely. I throw food out if i have any doubt about it's safety.
but my main problem is that i don't trust my fridge! (haha). i have a thermometer in there, which helps some, but also, makes me kinda crazy.
my fridge is only 4 years old, so i have no real reason not to trust it. except that sometimes the thermometer shows it above the safe zone...even if it hasn't been opened in a while, but then i'll recheck it like 15 mins later, and it's fine. i've done some reading on fridges, and the temps do fluctuate, it's not consistent, as the fan turns on and off. also, the thermometer will be more sensitive then the food, since the food will stay cold enough even if the thermometer reads 42 briefly, the food isn't necessarily 42. right?

this is starting to spill over in other ways too.
for example....today i cooked a meatloaf. i was cooking it early and going to refridgerate it for my son to heat up tonight for dinner, since i won't be home.
i cooked it, cut it in half and let it cool for about 20 mins on the counter. i then put it in a tupperware and put it in the fridge, strategically placing it in what i feel is the coldest section of the fridge. about an 1 1/2 hours later, i got it out and it was not cold. it wasn't warm anymore, but it wasn't cold. so, to me, that means that it has been in the unsafe zone of 40-140 for 2 hours, so i don't want him to eat it.

i am mad that my fridge didn't get it to 40 or below quicker than that.
am i crazy :) don't answer that :yahoo:

[cofo]

wow, maybe i'm the only one out there that has this weird problem....
oh dear. ;)

[Beckybecks]

I do have some issues about food being fresh and I don't like eating out, take-aways or taking food from other people. however I do trust my own food, I know how I prepared it, what I put into it and how fresh it is.
However I don't have a fridge that tells me what the temperature is. I also don't have a thermometer to test the temperature. I just know it's cold and I trust it to keep the food fresh.
Is your fear that you'll get food poisoning due to the food not being stored at the correct temperature?
Surely if the meat loaf is already cooked it won't go off if it's in the fridge, even if the temperature isn't quite correct, as long as it's cool.
Also I would say that putting warm food in the fridge isn't a good idea. The heat from the food will bring the temperature up in the fridge and it'll take it longer to do its job.

[ErinKC]

I could have written this. I have a terrible food safety anxiety that has also progressively gotten worse over time. I won't even buy meat anymore because I am always convinced it's bad even if I literally just purchased it from the store and brought it home. I used to eat rotisserie chickens all the time since I didn't have to do the cooking, but then once at Shop Rite I saw all the raw chickens sitting on a cart waiting to be put in to cook and I pictured them just sitting there for hours growing bacteria, so now I can't eat them anymore. I also can't eat leftovers anymore because I'm sure they aren't good even the next day. I stopped eating burgers at restaurants because I don't believe they cook the meat enough. I won't eat from a salad bar anymore, and I get nervous any time I eat at a new restaurant.

I've never written all that out at once before and now it's making me kind of sad to see how bad it's gotten!! I was never like this before. It started when I randomly got ONE hive after eating a cranberry walnut bread. I went through a whole serious of allergy tests that came back negative, but while waiting for the rest I became afraid to eat most foods. Then I had an irrational botulism scare a while back.

Oh, and I also don't trust my fridge. It actually stopped cooling once. We got it fixed, but now I'm alway afraid that maybe it stopped cooling while I wasn't there and everything went bad. It's awful. I so fee for you!!