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Food: how safe is safe?
We make many decisions in our lives. In making these decisions we weigh the benefits against the drawbacks. Along with other factors, we consider health, happiness, convenience, safety, and money and we make trade-offs. We choose a job with a bigger salary over a job we might enjoy more. We drive to work because of the convenience though we may be harmed in an accident. Our decisions are based on what benefits are most important to us and what drawbacks we are willing to accept.
Decisions about what we eat are made in the same way. Benefits of food such as convenience, quality, taste, nutrition, safety, and cost are considered and we make trade-offs. We may choose taste over nutrition or convenience over cost without much thought. When safety of the food is in question, however, our decisions are usually made more carefully. Here is an example.
Let's say we go to a restaurant recommended for its great food and find the silverware very dirty. We assume the restaurant has low standards of cleanliness and worry about getting sick from the food. We decide to go to the cleaner restaurant next door, even though the food is less appealing.
In most cases, however, there is no dirty silverware or other obvious signs that the food is potentially unsafe. In such situations we need more information to make wise food safety decisions. We need to know where food comes from, what it contains, and how our government decides which foods are safe for us to eat.
There are no clear-cut decisions when it comes to food safety. All food has both benefits and drawbacks. That is why the more we understand about food safety in general, and the terminology used to describe it, the better equipped we will be to make appropriate decisions.
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