Selects: How Restaurant Health Inspections Work
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Hi, everyone. It's Josh here. And for this week's Select, I've chosen our episode on restaurant inspections. It may just put you off eating at restaurants ever again. I know it did for me. I haven't eaten in a restaurant since we released this episode. And that was back in 2017. Hold on. Hold on, everyone. I'm sorry.

Everyone, apparently that is not true. I do still eat at restaurants. Who knew? But at any rate, I hope you enjoy this stomach-churning select. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. ♪

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles, W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Rowland. You put the three of us in the room together with some raw chicken and some old mop water, you got yourself stuff you should know. So gross. So, Chuck, have you ever, like, been to a restaurant and seen something that you weren't supposed to see and been like, oh, I just ate here? I used to work at restaurants, as you know, and...

You know, some of them were pretty gross. I worked at a couple myself, and I never saw anything that I was like, this is wrong. But I realized over the years that I'm in the minority in that sense. Dude, my first job as a busboy, that was when I saw some of the most horrific things in my life, mainly because they had—

Oh, man. It was the people that worked there. They were dirty folks? They were dirty folks, and they were just people that didn't care about their own personal health and hygiene in any way. It was all gross, gross, gross. I saw a guy one time. Should I even say this? Yes, please. Dish.

And you're talking about kids working in the kitchen that are gross, like high school dropouts. And hey, I'm not knocking you if you dropped out of high school. Okay. Go get that GED and keep at it. That's right. But these were not those people. They couldn't even spell GED. Right. They're like, I didn't get my GED. Yeah. So these people, they were gross people. And I was 13 and I couldn't speak up. I didn't know, like, I'm not going to go to the owner of the restaurant at 13 because he didn't care.

But I saw one of these dishwashers go into a walk-in cooler, and he was so mad about the schedule that they put him on, he took the lid off of a big, you know, 15-gallon pot of Brunswick stew, and he put his shooed foot and leg into it. No. All the way to the bottom, and then took it back out. Yeah.

And let me tell you, man, those shoes, I've never had more disgusting clothing in my life than the clothes that I worked in at a barbecue restaurant. I know. They're like the whole reason Crocs are in business is because it's the only thing that won't slide across the greasy, dirty floor of every single restaurant in every single city in the entire world. Everything about that job was disgusting. They would drop meat on the ground and say, good catch, and laugh, and then pick it up off the floor and...

It was like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. The Jungle, like right before my little 13-year-old eyes. I grew up on that job.

In many, many ways. The only way that it could have been more like the jungle is if somebody actually died in the Brunswick stew and they just kept him in there. It was so foul, dude. That's grody, man. I don't even know what our restaurant inspection score was. I didn't even, I saw nothing like that at the restaurants I worked at. I worked at a handful of them. Nothing like that. Yeah, I worked at a bunch more and it was nothing like that. This was accessible. So that was the worst of the worst. Oh my God.

They're all burning in hell now. That's so gross. I drove by that place the other day on the way to Emily's parents. I went a different route, and now it's like a... Chi-chis? A title max. Oh, okay. Which I don't even know what that is. You can pawn your car title there for extremely exorbitant interest rates. Gotcha. Well, the ghosts of...

of rednecks pass dwell within those floors. Wow, man. Was the barbecue any good? I guess that's the moot point, right? I still ate there. Oh, dude, after the shoe thing? Yeah, man, I didn't... I was a kid. I didn't know. I mean, I didn't have Brunswick stew that day. Okay, good. Or ever again? I don't know. I just... I didn't know any better. I was dumb. You ate the Brunswick stew, Chuck, didn't you? I got a lot smarter after that. Well, um...

Again, I've never seen anything in person, but I've been on the internet and seen things like that guy who peed in the coffee apparently every day. But I think that was at an office, not a restaurant. There's like this laundry list of fingers being found in food. I saw an article, I think on like NPR or something. And it was like just basically the top five times fingers were found in food at restaurants. And it happens a lot.

Yeah, just quickly I should say that I feel bad for restaurant owners sometimes, especially at places like that, that it's not like some nice kind of place in town. You can do all you can do, but you still can't account for some little –

Jerk employee that's mad about something that wants to spit in someone's food on camera. Yeah, you know Yeah, you can't just you can't watch everyone 100% of the time and that's usually what is a case like that like this Dumb dishwasher kid. He just goes in the walk-in says watch this Right and there's there's I saw Like there's a case to be made then for not hiring young people. I

You hire people who have built a background for themselves, like a career for themselves already. Those are called good restaurants. Right. That's the difference. Yeah, I guess that is the difference. So in a sense, it's very much the owner's fault for being a cheap bastard and hiring people who put their shooed foot in the Brunswick stew. Okay, so...

My point is this, Chuck, that the shooed foot, fingers at Arby's, all these little things that are just horrible and horrific and disgusting would be vastly worse and vastly more frequent were it not for a lone group of people, the thin blue line between us and utter chaos when it comes to restaurants.

The Health Inspector. Yeah, this was, I'm so excited about this episode. Yeah, it's going to be a good one, man. Like, I don't know, when you sent it over, I was like, all right. But then I started reading, and it was interesting and awesome. There's history to it. Yeah, and one of these consumer advocacy shows that we love to do. We're doing our little Ralph Nader impression. Man, I love that guy. Great American. He's the top's.

So restaurant health inspectors are something of a newish invention. They're certainly not really old because...

At least in the United States. It wasn't until that book you mentioned, The Jungle, was published in 1905 that people like really sat up and took notice and Congress acted almost immediately, passed the Pure Food and Drug Act the next year. That's the impact that Upton Sinclair's The Jungle had. Yeah, rightfully so.

And in the book, I mean, he went undercover. He was a muckraking journalist. God bless him. And he went undercover to basically just take notes on all the horrible things he saw in the meatpacking industry and slaughterhouses. And he chronicled all the inhumane things that he saw.

and the way that animals were treated, but he also saw the inhumane ways the workers were treated. But his book had this impact, and Congress actually acted, and they created the Pure Food and Drug Act. And one of the things that came out of that was what came to be known as the Food Code Act.

and the food code is basically like here are the things that you should be doing in your restaurant to prevent from running afoul of the law or um creating foodborne illnesses yeah and like previous to this states were kind of taking care of their own health uh issues as best they could on their own but then when when that book came out people were like wait a minute they're shipping meat across state lines so

The states aren't taking care of it themselves. Right. This meat's going out everywhere. So it became a federal thing to be regulated. They made a federal case out of it. They did. And along with the Pure Food and Drug Act, very importantly, the Federal Meat Inspection Act was passed in that same year. Because I think everyone, I mean, even back then, like if you're grossed out in 1906, then they weren't as sensitive as we are today. So there was some gnarly stuff going on. Dude, yeah.

A guy falling into like a hot dog grinder? Come on. So the food code, the early food code that is, was sort of kind of the same stuff that we see today generally. We have refined everything over the years with science as to what's truly dangerous and not and how it gets dangerous. But even back then, they were concerned about

like proper meat storage and food storage and temperatures of things and the hygiene of employees and the premises themselves. Yeah, because basically what constitutes good practices hasn't changed all that much. But to respond to changes that do come about,

that do change best practices or our understanding of the science of foodborne illnesses. The food code was republished every year starting in 1993. Every two years, they updated it and republished it. And then in 2001, they moved it to four years. But that to me is like that –

friends, is the reason we pay taxes. Yeah. So that there are people who are going around finding out the most cutting edge understanding of how we get sick from foods at restaurants. Then also finding out the exact ways to prevent this from happening, publishing it into a book and distributing it to the states who then put it into practice. Yeah. It takes money to do this kind of thing, but that's why we pay taxes. The next time somebody tells you that

They don't care about government regulations and that we live in a nanny state. You remind them of what it would be like if they ate out at a restaurant without this kind of stuff. Yeah, those people. We don't need government regulating stuff. All right, sir, then you will be eating eyeball. Right. You'll be eating human eyeball in your next Frankfurter. I will feed it to you myself.

So the food code today, just like the very first one back in 1934, is voluntary. It is not federal law. It is still up to those states to go out and write their own rules. It aligns generally with the federal regulations and what the FDA recommends. And then it gets a little more confusing because when it comes down to actual restaurant inspections, there is no federal or state inspector that comes in there.

It's the city or the county who's going to be carrying this out. And they work with the state and then in turn the federal government to kind of all be on the same page.

Right, yeah. I think it's almost kind of like the government's the one who has the funding to go actually look around and survey and find the science and put these best practices out. But it's the county or the city where the rubber meets the road. That's right. The shoe meets the pavement more likely. Or the shoe meets the Brunswick stew. That's so right. Not the Brunswick stew. That's like one of the best things I had at a barbecue place. Let's take a break, shall we?

And I'm going to go brush my tongue with a toothbrush. Okay. And I'll be right back. All right. ♪♪♪

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and try HealthAid Kombucha today. Get it in 30 minutes or less on GoPuff. Okay, and we're back. And Chuck, let me smell your breath. How's that? Man, that is nice. A little Listerine. Yeah. If I do detect, is that Tom's toothpaste you used? No. Okay. What toothpaste do you use? I use, I'm using Crest right now.

Which one? The orange one? No. Orange. That's my favorite. Yeah, so the color of the packaging is orange, but the type of mint, it's like called citrus mint, but you would never, if you didn't see that, you wouldn't be like, oh, this is citrus mint. It's just its own type of very pleasant mint flavor sensation. Yeah.

Yeah, I just use the regular, not the white, but I think it's like the blue Crest right now. Pro Health, I think. Yeah, yeah, Pro Health. And then I do use the Listerine now. I've been on that for a solid couple of years. Yeah. Because it's six in one. Six benefits in one. Why are we talking about this? I don't know. Man, we're not even getting paid for that. Maybe mine is...

Maybe mine is Aquafresh. It's either Aquafresh or Crest, whichever one makes citrus mint. That's what I use. But do you remember Aim? Oh, yeah. What was that? So that stuff, I think it's still around. It actually doesn't do anything as far as brushing your teeth goes, as far as toothpaste goes. But remember it came out in three different colors, like green, red, and white? And it was just pretty? Yeah.

But it's bad toothpaste. I'm not a big fan of it, but I love looking at it. How about that? Yeah, I remember that. All right, so back to food inspection. Now that our mouths are clean, there are usually three kinds of food safety inspections. You got your reg, the one that's done on the reg. It's known as a routine inspection, and that's the one where they come in. It might be every six months. It might be every year and a half or so, depending on some stuff we'll get to here in a bit.

And that's the one where you go in and you just see the thing on the wall that gives it the score. That's the one where you're working in the restaurant and the owner and the manager freak out. They're like, oh, God, no, no. They do the second they walk through the door. Although I will say in New Jersey where I worked at the store in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, we were always great. They took it really seriously. Every time the inspector came by, they were like, come on in.

That's the way it should be. It's a big shout out to the store in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Way to go, the store. That place is great. And they had a restaurant group and they had like six restaurants and they were all done the right way. I don't think you could really have a restaurant group without approaching food inspection and health standards in that way, too.

Yeah, I mean, it's just dumb not to. And from what I saw, too, we also kind of—did you read that Mental Floss article I sent? Yeah. So one of the things—it's called 12 Secrets of Restaurant Health Inspectors. One of the things they point out is that usually the bigger the chain, so whether it's a restaurant group on up to a global chain like, you know, one of those guys. McDonald's.

Oh, wow. Jinx, buddy. You're probably going to see something close to 100 every time. And the reason why is because they have a lot of skin in the game. They have a lot to lose, right? Like they pointed out with Chipotle, like there were one or two locations of Chipotle's where some bad cilantro got some people sick with E. coli.

But all Chipotle suffered as a result. People just stopped going. They lost hundreds of millions of dollars and came probably pretty close to going under there for a little while. And I think they're still definitely clawing their way out from under it.

So they don't just rely on state, county, or city health inspectors. They do their own. They hire their own third parties to come in and carry out health inspections much more frequently than the government's doing just to make sure that they're up to standards. Yeah, so your local fast food chain is more likely to be super clean than the mom and pop. Yeah.

theory but in my opinion you're also more likely gonna find the kid in the kitchen that goes hey watch this yeah yeah it's definitely a trade-off and that's that's it yeah because it's definitely not to say that you know mom-and-pop places are inherently unsafe if it's a family business you're you have just as much skin in the game as a global absolutely global restaurant chain because this is your family's livelihood so yeah you're gonna take it seriously

So getting back, the other two types of inspections real quick besides the routine are the follow-up investigation where they do say like, all right, you need to fix these things. I'll be back next Thursday or I'll be back tomorrow depending on what's going on. Right. Or I'll shut down your restaurant while you fix this stuff. It's so bad. And then there are inspections that are triggered by consumer complaints. Right.

Yes, that's the one where they like use the bat signal, but instead of a bat, it's like a fork in the sky. And then the restaurant inspector swoops in and is like, I'm here. I'm here, everybody. Calm down. Yeah, so I mentioned that people, restaurants will be inspected maybe every six months, maybe every year, a year and a half. They are, it's not willy-nilly. They are assessed a risk factor as an establishment, right?

by the county or whatever local municipality is carrying this out. And that has to do with a bunch of things. Sometimes it's the kind of food, like if you're serving sushi, you might get inspected a little more. Sushi. Sushi, because you're serving raw fish. I didn't say sushi that done. Sushi that done, did I? No, no, no. Oh, no, that's Steve Brule. Steve Brule. Sushi sandwich. Sushi sandwich. I thought it was my missing tooth. No. Okay.

Or if you're cooking meat or whatever, raw meat, you might get inspected a little more than a deli that just has, you know, pre-prepared meats and foods. Yeah, like those cold cuts are already cooked. It's not like they're serving you raw turkey slices. Like it's already cooked. They're just putting it together onto a sandwich. Yeah. That's a low-risk restaurant, comparatively speaking. Yeah, you know what always gets me, even though I love a gyro, is when I see the—

See the thing on the spit next to the heat lamp rotating around? Right. I always just think, how safe is that? I would guess if it's operating in the United States, safe enough. Okay.

That's the whole point of restaurant inspectors, so that you don't have to ask that question. You can look at that and say, somebody who knows what they're doing has inspected that and determined that that is not a threat to my health. Maybe it just creeps me out to look at it. No, I'm with you. I understand. I also want to say there are some places where you go in and you're like, this is clearly in violation of some health codes. I have no idea how this place is allowed to stay like this, but it's still worth it. And I would direct you to Ann's.

Ann's Ghetto Burger. Oh, yeah. Right by your house. Yeah, that's just down the street. Yes. Have you had one? I've never had an Ann's because...

I thought that she left and it closed, but it's still going. Is she still running it? Do you know? I don't know. She had been threatening to retire for 20 years or something, but I knew she wanted to get bought out and didn't want to just close it down. So hopefully she was able to retire. That's my hope. All I know is the Wall Street Journal said it was, I think, maybe the best hamburger in the United States. The Wall Street Journal ain't lying. You know? Yes. But if you go there, it's like...

decades worth of grease just on the vent around the backsplash, like the stainless steel backsplash or whatever, splatter guard behind the griddle. And you're like, how did she get away with that? And then you take a bite of it and you're like, oh, because it matters not at all compared to this burger. Well, maybe she is compliant because that is the second risk factor involved with how often you're going to get inspected, which is

Do you have a list of complaints or a record of violations on your record? Yeah. Then you're going to be on their frequent visitor list. Right. You know? Yeah, yeah. And especially if you've ever been the source of a foodborne illness, you're a high risk automatically. Yeah, probably permanently. Yeah, I would think so. And depending on where you are, you know, like you're going to get lots of visits after that. That's probably...

Aside from maybe people getting shot in your restaurant, a foodborne illness is probably the worst thing that can happen in your restaurant. Yeah. I would guess. And, you know, whether you're...

Well, if you're a new restaurant in particular, I should say, I think the standard is that depending on where you fall as far as what kind of restaurant you are, whether you're a deli serving cold cuts or a sushi place serving raw seafood, you're assigned like an initial risk assessment.

And then depending on that risk assessment, if you're a sushi place, say they're going to come visit every three months for the first year. Or if you're a deli, they might come once every year and a half.

And then depending on how you perform in those inspections, those regular routine inspections that are basically predetermined by the type of restaurant you are, that schedule can either diminish or increase. So let's say that deli is found to be in violation pretty frequently every 18 months. They're going to start getting inspected every 12 months or every six months. Or that sushi place that's getting inspected every three months or six months, if it's just pre-inspected,

painfully obvious that they are top-notch pros who are taking this quite seriously and never get caught for anything, then that three or six months may end up turning into a year. Who knows?

Yeah, you may have heard reports on the news, too, that food inspectors have racist policies where they will go after ethnic restaurants more often. No, I hadn't heard that. Is that right? Yeah, I've seen reports on stuff like that. Wow. That they get inspected more frequently if you're, like, have an ethnic restaurant. That's pretty rotten. But there is a food safety expert at North Carolina State named Ben Chapman that says there's really no data to back that up.

He said, but there could be biases through consumer complaint systems. Oh, I see. And they did sort of just a snapshot from Yelp reviews, which, say what you want about Yelp reviews. They're pretty much the worst thing ever. Right. But...

If you look at Yelp reviews, you do a search for food poisoning, and close to 70% of the time they were ethnic restaurants where people complained about food poisoning. I see. This food is weird. It is possible. I don't recognize it. That some bias comes in through that. But that makes sense then, Chuck. If Yelp is a proxy for the number of times somebody might call in a complaint—

That's one of the ways that a food inspector goes out to inspect a restaurant is when somebody in the public calls and says something or complains. So, I mean, that makes utter and complete sense.

Have you ever called and complained about a restaurant? Have you ever called the health department? No. I never have either. And actually, after researching this article, I was like, I can think of at least one time when I could have and should have called. Just got undercooked chicken. And Yumi and I both got very sick for like the whole weekend. And I kept calling this place like,

Like, what are you guys going to do about this? You have to do something. And they just got less and less interested the more frequently I called them. By like the fourth or fifth time, I was like, we're still suffering. I just wanted to let you know. We're laying around throwing up. Wow.

And they didn't do anything about it. There was no, we're sorry. I think they actually didn't believe me maybe. But now that I've read this, I'm like, I totally should have called the health department on those guys. What city was this? It was in Atlanta. I think I remember that actually. We got so, we were sick for an entire weekend. It was a pretty nice place too, right? Yes. I totally remember that story. Right across from where we used to work in Buckhead actually. I remember that.

And they could not have cared less. And that's what ticked me off. Oh, you were calling the restaurant over and over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I thought you called the health inspector over and over. No, but now I'm like, why didn't we just call the health inspector? Not cool. Now I would call for sure, now that I've done this research, because it's not like...

But like what you're doing is helping other people from the same fate befalling them. Yeah, you're not being a rat. Right, right, which is another thing that health inspectors look out for. All right, well, let's talk about that. This is how this goes down. There are unannounced visits, like I said. So I've worked at, I don't know, like probably four or five places over the years.

And two of them were pretty bad. The aforementioned barbecue place and then where I worked in college. Wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. It was a typical like college town Mexican joint. But it wasn't like the super professional other restaurants that I've worked at. But at those first two places, I remember when the restaurant inspector walked through the door, a panic set in. Invariably, one of the, like the GM or whoever the manager was,

would immediately confront, not confront, but greet the person and send, you know, the understanding was someone go back to the kitchen and tell everyone that the inspector is here. And judging from that mental floss article you sent, that's exactly how it works. And for that reason, the very first thing a good health inspector does is kind of barge through there and say, I'm going straight to the kitchen right this second.

Right. Because they know what's going on. Right. They have to, or else a whole bunch of violations get covered up really quickly. Very quickly. And so in that Mental Floss article, basically they said they needed to do like a brisk run-walk through the kitchen as fast as they could. Isn't that scary? It is. But it's also like— Is that what they have to do? You sculls, like what are you doing? Like just stand there and freeze. That's what they should do is be like, everybody freeze. Freeze.

and then have their finger and thumb in the shape of a gun. Because I don't think they're allowed to actually carry guns. Well, this one health inspector in the middle of this thing said, "We want to see the things that won't be there in another three to four minutes." Right.

But that's the thing. But, I mean, it could be anything. Like, there's, like, if you are sitting there making food and you have, like, a cup of Coke, right? Uh-huh. You're not supposed to have that there. Yeah, and your cell phone in the kitchen. It's another big one, too. I'll bet that is probably the most frequent violation today. They're covered in poop.

Do you ever see some, like, have you ever just stopped and looked at people on the street, like, with their phones? Like, they'll just be stopped mid-something. Like, they have, like, a shovel, like, propped up against their shoulder, just looking at their phone with their mouth hanging open. And it's, like, crazy. We're turning into, like, a society of zombies, man.

How do you stare at your phone? I've seen you do that. You do it in a smarter looking way. I do the thing where I'm like stroking my chin thoughtfully. Right, your mouth is closed. Exactly. I've got like one eyebrow arched. All right, so the first thing they inspect, obviously the kitchen. The manager, the owner, whoever is there on point is with the inspector the whole time.

Because they're saying, like, hey, like little things, like that ketchup bottle is disgusting. Like, why don't you go ahead and have someone clean that up? I won't dock you a point, but just get it clean. And the guy wipes it down. He's like, no, that brand, it's Hunt. I mean, get some Heinz in here. It's disgusting. But the first things they inspect are the dynamic areas, which are the kitchen, food preparation areas, kitchen.

Basically, anywhere where there's food actively out is the first place they'll go. Right. That's the...

Is that a dynamic? That's the dynamic. Okay. And you start with 100 points, by the way. I don't know if we mentioned that. Which I think is kind of optimistic. It's saying, like, I want to believe the best in you. So everybody starts with 100, and then we start deducting from there. Yeah, then it just gets sad. So one of the first things they're looking for is employee hygiene. Because remember what you mentioned, like, way back when the Food and Drug Act was created and the Food Code was first established, right?

There were a lot of basic tenets that were put forth back then. And one of them was the people who cook the food need to be clean as a whistle. And that's one of the big things that the health inspector is looking for. Like, are they wearing gloves?

Which, by the way, is not to say that if an employee is wearing gloves that you're totally covered. The gloves are supposed to be a fail-safe to good hand washing. Yeah. So you want them to be washing their hands very frequently and then wearing gloves on top of that. But then on top of that, not doing things like using their cell phone with the gloves on. Yeah. Because you've just automatically contaminated them and totally defeated the purpose of using gloves at that point, right? Yeah.

So there's a lot of hygiene things that are being taken into account. But

How do you tell whether people are washing their hands when you're just walking into a kitchen? Of course they're going to wash their hands in front of you in the way that they're supposed to be, but how do you know they're doing it routinely, Chuck? Well, yeah, and we should say that there is a way you're supposed to wash the hands. You don't rinse them off and just dry them with the towel that's sitting by the sink. Or just blow on them. You rinse, you put on the soap, you scrub for 20 seconds, and then you dry off with a one-use towel.

Good old unsustainable made out of tree paper towel. Yeah, or if you're a really fancy restaurant, you can just have like cashmere towels laying around as long as you throw them away afterward. Right, you have to throw them away. But your little trick, I know where you were leading, how you can tell is this one very crafty restaurant inspector in the Mental Floss article said they go in, the first thing they do, because it takes them a couple hours at just sort of a normal-sized restaurant.

um four or five hours at a big like hotel restaurant he said he puts an x on the paper towels and if he goes back at the end of his inspection and that x is still on the paper towel then he knows hands are not being washed right very sneaky pretty clever yeah yeah uh so i guess we just gave it away though so now all the people are going to go check their paper towel rolls i bet there are other ways

Yeah, that was just a setup to nudge them into the actual way he's telling. Yeah, like wash your hands. Food is another big one too, right? You want to make sure that the food is being properly stored and properly cooked. And apparently there is a danger zone between I think like zero and 140 that you want to hit or that you want to stay outside of.

So basically you want your food, especially like raw meat, to be stored at a temperature, frozen, right? Or else kept at 40 degrees Fahrenheit, 40 degrees Celsius or below for fridges.

And then when you cook it, you have to cook it to at least 160 degrees internal temperature for beef, pork, all those guys, and then 145 for fish. And if a restaurant's not doing that, that's a big one, as we'll see. Yeah, I mean, the best way to think about food storage is—

without getting into the specific temperatures, is if it's supposed to be cold or frozen, it should be cold or frozen. If it's supposed to be hot, it should be hot. It's that middle ground is where you're in big trouble. Exactly. They talk about lukewarm being the big enemy. Right. That's never good. Lukewarm? I'm trying to think of a time when lukewarm is preferable with anything. It just sounds gross. I know. I like my food really hot, too.

Yeah. Like, that's the one thing I will send something back is if it was clearly made a little earlier than the rest of the party at the table and it's sort of lukewarm. I'm like, no, man, I want steam coming off this thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's never... So they throw it in the microwave. Yeah, they do. And then they're like, oh, I guess you want a little spit on that, too. Apparently soup should be... Like, the way you reheat things is a big deal because obviously that Brunswick stew, you don't just throw it out every night. You put it back in the walk-in, so some...

Jerk can step in it, but when you bring soups and broths back to heat, you have to reboil them entirely from their refrigerated state. Which makes sense, but that's never very good for food. If it's already prepared, once you reboil it, probably you're just going to want to throw that away then. Really? Yeah.

Yeah, man. It toughens everything up or else it overcooks it. It's already been cooked once, so when you bring it to a boil, you're really cooking it again. And for foodborne illnesses, that's a good way to treat it, but it doesn't necessarily make for the most appetizing food. All right. I don't know if I agree with that, but that's all right. That's what I'm going with. Frozen meat, you don't just say, hey, Jimmy –

Throw that frozen bird out on the table and leave it there until this evening. Right. But you don't just leave food out to thaw. There are proper ways of thawing and bringing things back to the correct temperature. Right. And then so let's say you have a place where you're cutting up that thawed chicken that was properly thawed. And then you set the knife down and somebody else picks it up and they start cutting lettuce with it.

That's cross-contamination. That is extremely dangerous because, as you know, very few people cook their lettuce before they eat it in a salad. It's raw. And so now it has raw chicken juice on the lettuce that you're eating raw and uncooked, and you can die from that. So cross-contamination is a big one they look for. They also – it can be a little more simple like with something like silverware.

From what I saw, if the silverware is dirty or smudgy, that is a big problem because that means usually that the whole kitchen is dirty. There's a lot of – that's like a big red flag that apparently health inspectors will tell you. That if the silverware is dirty, it usually is indicative of just a dirty restaurant in general. Yeah.

And I've always heard, I don't know if it's an urban legend or not, but you know like just the plastic soda cups that like a lot of restaurants will have? Have you ever heard that it's not possible for them to get to the temperature needed to kill any bacteria on them because they'll melt otherwise? I have not heard that. So that when you drink out of them, they've not really been sanitized from before. Yeah.

I have not heard that, but as someone who has worked as a dishwasher, you don't say, well, I'm going to wash these things at this temperature. You just throw everything through there. Yeah, you don't have any choice in what temperature. It's all prescribed for you. You're just basically putting them on the tray and sliding them through, pulling the door down, and then it washes them, and then you lift the door up and pull them out. Yes, and I will say one of my dreams, though, is to have one of those in my home. Those, I can't remember what they're called, but they are wonderful. It's pretty great. Yeah. It just washes everything, like, super fast. Yeah.

So that's the dynamic areas, right? Yes. There's also the static areas where it's things like, well, the dishwashing area actually apparently is a static area. It doesn't change very much. Where you store cleaning products, that kind of stuff. I guess you get points deducted if your cleaning products or your toxic chemicals are not in their marked original package. Yeah, that's not good. Because they can be mistaken for oil and vinegar or something like that.

Yeah, and they're going to check the static areas include a lot of things that you don't think would even fall under the purview of a restaurant inspector. They're going to look at your HVAC systems and your vents and your smoke detectors. They're going to look at your dining room and the floors and the ceilings and your ceiling fans and your dumpster behind and your grease trap. Like they look at everything. Right.

Which is good. And another one that they take a look at that I think is probably a big problem for restaurants in a lot of ways are ice machines. There's a lot of parts to ice machines that are out of view. This thing scared me in Mental Floss now. That can like grow mold pretty easy. Yeah.

And not just the ice machine, right, where they're like scooping ice out, which is another thing too. Like there better be an ice scoop, right? Yes. It can grow mold in the ice machine. But also those chutes where ice comes out of like a beverage dispenser.

Those are usually serviced by the company that that makes the beverages that it's dispensing right and so it would be up to that company to clean those out which means that they get even less attention than the rest of the restaurant so the next time you're getting like ice out of a beverage dispenser like get your flashlight out of your pocket and Look up there and see if you see any mold and then just raise holy hell if you do yeah, and I'm not a big fan of the serve yourself and

soft drink stations anyway for, you know, out there with the public. I don't think the public should ever have access to something. That's why, well, that's not the reason, but buffets are just so gross and creepy. I haven't been to a buffet in, good Lord, I don't know, 20 years. Yeah, I know. But the thought of a buffet, I know they have the sneeze guard, but people like scooping in and serving themselves their own food from a trough is so weird and gross and archaic.

that I can't believe people still do that. Well, I mean, also, like, even if you're using, like, a spoon, like a serving spoon to scoop something out. Which you are. So did the person before you, right? And that means you're touching the same serving spoon and then going back and using your hands to go eat. So you just touched whatever the other person had on their hands, and now you're coming in contact with your mouth. It's a flawed system for sure. It is, because what you're saying is, I'm going to count on...

The 300 people that have eaten here today before me are all completely hygienic. All their hands have been washed. Yeah, Timothy poop hands is in among them. No one did a single gross thing like if a tater tot fell off the spoon, flicked it back in with their finger. Like no one did anything wrong at all. I just, no way. Not even at like Whole Foods or someplace. Those are all gross to me.

Oh, yeah. Whole Foods would count with that too, huh? Although I do like a build-your-own-salad thing every once in a while. That's the exception. Good salad bar? Yeah. It's tough to turn down. I'm with you. Well, let's take a break, think a little more about salads, and we'll be right back. Amazon One Medical presents Painful Thoughts.

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All right, we're back, Charles. Let's talk about point deductions, eh? Yes, let's. Remember, we said that restaurant inspectors are very optimistic, and they start out with 100. It just goes down from there. And again, you know, since these are done like city by city or county by county, like everybody has like their own methods or whatever. But usually, and I think the FDA has pointed out, like there are five things that you're really looking for, like five general categories. Yeah.

improper storage of food as far as temperature goes. Yes. Inadequately cooked food, equipment that's contaminated,

sources that are unsafe, that are an unsafe supply of the ingredients, right? So like if it turns out like the goat is coming from their buddy's farm, that might be a problem. And then personal hygiene of the people who work there, right? Right. And so depending on some of those, especially if there's multiple ones of these, these are big ones.

they will probably be a high priority type one or critical violation. Any of those? Yes.

And then there's also other ones where like this is not that big of a deal, but it's definitely something that needs to be paid attention to. Those fall after those usually. And it can be anything from like a dented can that could conceivably contain botulism, but definitely hasn't been proven to contain botulism being thrown away to there being a hole in the screen door that's left open for some reason.

Yeah, and these, as far as deducting individual points that you'll see on the wall when you walk in, and if you don't look at that piece of paper when you walk into a restaurant, I don't know what's going on in your brain. You should always do that. Sure. But like a static violation, like, hey, there were some chairs that had bad legs. Your ceiling fan was pretty dusty. Those would be like a point each. Maybe a couple of points for a minor infraction. Like your cleaning product, like I found a roach.

You know, the chef has his cell phone in the kitchen. That's a couple of points. All the way up to four and five points. And that's when you're talking about your fridge is broken and it is not up to temperature and everything in there is at risk. And that's when they can actually shut you down until you get it fixed. Yeah.

Yeah, which I got the impression from this article that that is a rarity, that the health inspector wants to err on the side of the restaurant staying open and solving everything as quickly as it can while also its business not suffering unnecessarily. So if your restaurant gets shut down temporarily, like that violation was –

significant enough that people were at an immediate risk of getting sick from visiting your restaurant. Exactly. It's a big deal, in other words. It's as big a deal as you would think. Yeah, but with those point deductions, if you go in and you see like a 72 on a restaurant score sheet, it's probably not 28 individual small violations. Right. There are probably some four and five pointers in there.

And you should probably think about eating there. Or, you know, it says in this article you can go to the website and really break down because those aren't for the public to necessarily be able to digest easily. But if you do look at them, if you can get close to them, you can actually look and see the little category for each thing. Sometimes it's behind the register. They may not like you poking around. Well, the health departments usually put them on the web these days.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like you can investigate online. Okay. But in the restaurant itself, it is marked. It's, you know, a bunch of tiny little letters and categories. And you can give it a look and, you know, as long – I wouldn't spend too much time there. Like just go by that initial score. And if you're really like, well, I got to see what those 18 points were deducted for, I would just turn around and walk out. Right, yeah.

Especially if there's an identical place like right across the street. Yeah. But that is a pretty good point because when you think about it, most people just see that big score prominently displayed, whether it's like an A or a B or a C or like a 85 or a 98 or whatever. And it's not really meant to be shorthand for...

for the public. I mean, I guess it is in a way where it's like, hey, buddy, you're really taking a gamble here at like 75. But when it's really high up, it does seem to be kind of an indicator, like this one's A-OK in my book. That's not really what the restaurant...

inspection report is supposed to be. It's supposed to be a lot more granular than that. And so to really tell whether you're running a risk at eating in a restaurant or not, you actually do have to go to the trouble of looking up what the violations were. And then even then judging for yourself, because short of the health inspector deciding to shut the restaurant down and making the decision for you that you can't go there, they're not saying like, don't eat here.

Like if it passes inspection enough to stay open, then as far as the county health department is concerned, it's good enough for you to be eating there, but that might not really jibe with your own definition. So to get that information, you have to go find out why points were deducted. Yeah, and you can't – it's either the Mental Floss or our own article point out that just because some place has a bad rating doesn't mean –

They haven't fixed things, and it's fine now. And just because it has a great rating doesn't mean they're not in violation that day. These inspectors come every six months to a year for a couple of hours during a lunch shift, and it is a snapshot of what occurred on that day. Right. So there is no, like, fail-safe for a consumer. You just got to, you know, do the best you can, cross your fingers. Right.

Yeah, just roll the dice. That everything's okay in there. Or just cook at home and boil everything, including your lettuce. Ooh, boiled lettuce. Delicious. What? I'm just kidding. Oh. I didn't know if I was missing out on something. No, no, no. You got anything else on restaurant inspections? Um...

Just this one more little tidbit from Mental Floss that I thought was pretty great. Let's hear it. Is that this one restaurant inspector said that he can smell cockroaches in the air at this point. Yeah, that's a real problem with cockroaches, though, don't you think? To be able to smell, I guess it'd be an infestation is what he's smelling. Yeah, he said you can walk in, take a deep breath.

And he said it's kind of a nutty, oily smell that you, after years on the job, I can identify it. He's like, I still get hungry every time I smell it. I got a lot of roaches in my house right now, and it's really pissing me off. I don't know. It's a clean house, you know. It's not gross. It's just this summer—

was just real kind of muggy and dank. Do you have a lot of cardboard boxes in your attic or basement? No, I don't know where they're coming from. Like, we see them outside all over the place. Maybe it's that swale pond from the permaculture episode. Maybe. Yeah, the permaculture lady was like, I forgot to tell you, you're going to have roaches. This is the only new thing. I don't know, man.

Good luck and Godspeed, though. Go find the most sustainable way to treat it. I'll be interested to hear what you come up with. Well, so far it's been the flip-flop method. Oh, poor roaches. No. If you want to know more about cockroaches or restaurant health inspections or flip-flops, you can type those words in the search bar at houseofworks.com. And I said that, which means it's time for Listener Mail.

All right, I'm going to call this a great gross way to finish this gross-ish podcast. Excellent. Hey, guys. Wanted to regale you with a story of how you two contributed to my fantastic relationship, my wonderful girlfriend. Last summer and fall, I was traveling across the country camping, going to national parks, and I wound up in Moab, Utah at Canyonlands and Arches.

And met a smart, fun girl at a brewery, and we made a date to go hiking the next day. Picked her up, and we went on a wonderful little hike, and disaster struck. Turns out months of cheddar bratwurst and beer wasn't great for my digestive system, and I felt horrible, and I had an inescapable urge to take the Browns to the Super Bowl.

Unfortunately, I was miles away from a leaf and I ran out of excuses to keep stopping and standing still for a moment. Hey, look at that arch again. Uh, so I had to tell her the horrible truth on our first date and I was sure it would ruin it. Uh, eventually I made my way to a bathroom, shoved some poor people aside and, uh,

Safely made it back to town, but I was horribly embarrassed and sure I had ruined everything. On the way back to town, she asked if she could put a podcast on, and she played me your episode about poop.

Oh, nice. How about that? She's got a good sense of humor. Great sense of humor. I've never been as happy to hear two men describing fecal matter. At that point, I knew anyone could spin a date almost pooping in their pants into an excuse to share their podcast favorites as a keeper. We've been together over a year now, and we love listening to your new episodes while we hike and camp.

And poop. And poop, I guess. They've got, remember the love seat that Saturday Night Live commercial where it was like the two toilets facing each other so you could hold hands while you pooped? Exactly. Couldn't be happier to find a new favorite thing to listen to and a wonderful new girlfriend at the same time. So I want to thank you guys. If you ever get back to Denver, maybe next year. We don't know yet.

I'll be buying tickets as soon as I hear the announcement. That is from Tom, and he said, if you do read this in the air, please give a shout-out to Alice. Nice. Tom and Alice. Yeah. Way to go, kids. Thanks for writing in, Tom. Nice story. If you want to get in touch with us like Tom did, lay it on us. Send us an email to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Amazon Pharmacy presents Painful Thoughts. Oh, I'm sick. So I took my sick to the doctor. The doctor gave my sick a prescription. Now my sick and I are lying at the pharmacy, mingling with all the other sicks, on its way to becoming an even worse sick.

Next time, keep your sick at home and let Amazon Pharmacy deliver your meds right to your door. Amazon Pharmacy. Healthcare just got less painful. Imagine the most beautiful panoramic setting. Endless waves crashing on a beach. Kids playing in the park. Now right smack in the middle of your perfect picture, imagine just one piece of litter.

It doesn't fit, does it? And it simply doesn't belong anywhere. Certainly not in California. Not even one piece. Good news. If we work together, we will change it all. Clean California. Zero litter is the goal. CleanCA.com.

There's a lot of pros to drinking HealthAid Kombucha. No cons that I can think of. Pro, amazing taste. Pro, pairs well with anything. Pro, probiotic. That's a literal pro. And it's deliciously refreshing. It's the perfect pairing to your meal or great on its own, whether you're having Pink Lady Apple, Berry Lemonade, or one of the other great flavors. It's the perfect swap for soda or alcohol. Make it part of your daily routine. Look for the brown bottle with an anchor on it.

and try HealthAid Kombucha today. Get it in 30 minutes or less on GoPuff.