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[side_show]

I came home from work to discover the SO had somehow managed to leave the fridge open, so our food was unrefrigerated for what amounts to approximately 7 hrs.  I've closed the door, but suspect not much can be saved even if I get it back up to a safe temperature, which will probably take some time.  Before I closed the door I touched stuff and everything in the front felt room temperature.  Unfortunately we had just recently gone shopping, so I have an unopened case of a dozen yogurts, a 4 Gallon carton of milk, butter, lunch meats, feta cheese (unopened), cream, sour cream (unopened), a big jar of mayo, a large unopened package of that tasty imitation king crab...  I'm guessing most of it will have to be tossed, but we're talking about at least $100 worth of food, up to about $250 if I toss everything that could spoil (I was having company over tomorrow and had stocked up, but we'll be eating takeout instead).

I've been hospitalized for food poisoning before, so I'm basically unwilling to take any risks, but I'm also on a low budget and buy lots of stuff in bulk, and I hate wasting food!  I called the local food safety office, and they said to check by taste and use my best judgment, but can you really taste bacteria?  I'm thinking they don't want any liability, so they didn't want to go into detail.  It seems odd that I can't find anywhere that tells me specifically and factually what's safe and what's not.  What I need more of is science!

[wombat]

I just Googled "power failure food safety" and most of the hits on the first page were Canadian. How did they know it was your question?

Don't throw away mayo - I mean, it wasn't refrigerated when you bought it, right?  And I would keep the feta cheese because it has so much salt in it, it's not going to spoil that quickly.

This one's nice and thorough. It even includes hoisin sauce. I'm going to save the link.
http://www.health.gov.on.ca/english/public/pub/foodsafe/homefood.html

[jaydub]

According to the US FDA, its not the spoilage bacteria you need to worry about, its contamination of food with pathogenic bacteria that grows well at temperatures between 40F and 140F.  This is probably a distinction without a difference in your case (how could you know which foods are potentially contaminated?), but its apparently possible that food that tastes fine can make you sick, and food that tastes rotten may not.  The various pathogens grow without making noxious stuff that makes the food taste bad.

I would say that anything unopened is probably fine, but you can expect sour milk earlier than the expiration date indicates.  It might taste ok now and for a few more days, but my experience shows that the placebo effect is definitely at work when you're trying to decide whether food is spoiled.  I almost always get a hint of nastiness if someone says "does this smell off to you?", whether it is or not.

[side_show]

Thanks wombat - that's exactly what I was looking for, and I'm definitely going to bookmark it too.

I'm thinking I'll be tossing the mayo because it's been opened for a while and was in the door and nothing in the door was even remotely cold at all when I got home.  I'll risk it with a few of the unopened things like the feta (although the feta's packed in whey... my brain thinks wet = bad, but I don't know why).  I definitely wont serve any of it to the guests tomorrow though.

I would have looked into this more throughly and maybe found some info on my own, but I was frantically looking for the cats because one of them ate a large portion of plastic wrap along with the left over pizza it was wrapped around.  They also drank a bunch of milk, ate cheese sticks and possibly more.  All the cats seem fine, but the SO is paying the damn vet bill if it becomes apparent that kitty needs an emergency surgery, and he's the one who'll be using the wet/dry vac for any related puke sessions.

[jaydub]

...one of them ate a large portion of plastic wrap along with the left over pizza it was wrapped around.  They also drank a bunch of milk, ate cheese sticks and possibly more. 

Check the liquor.  Cats are tricky, they might have poured some water in to make it look like there's none missing.

[Victoria Waterfield]

The butter is absolutely fine. I keep my butter out on the counter so that it spreads easily, and I've never had it go bad.

[lprkn]

It appears that the only real consequences of your SO's absentmindedness is one excellent kitty party.

[side_show]

Check the liquor.  Cats are tricky, they might have poured some water in to make it look like there's none missing.

Damn - that's where my Gin went.  Here I was thinking I drank it on New Year's Eve.

We threw out at least $100 of food when all's said and done, and now the fridge has an odd sour stink to it.  I put down a couple bowls of baking soda inside and will give it a good cleaning when I have a little more energy.  What a waste.  Our monthly food budget for the two of us is about $300, so this is a devastating loss.  Thankfully we were overfed over Christmas, so now we've got one more reason to live off veggie stir fry, rice and beans for a month.

VW - The pro/anti butter argument is something I looked into quite a bit about 10 years ago.  Lots of food experts say it's fine, but don't ever sight any science.  Andrew Weil, M.D. the latter day health guru, vehemently argues for storing all fats in the fridge to prevent oxidation (yup even olive oil), which is the process that leads to rancidity- consuming rancid foods is concretely known to be very harmful to one's long term health, so preventing and avoiding this, even in early stages, is a good thing.  He concludes that preventing and avoiding oxidation of fat in the food we eat is important to overall health. Check out the section of Weil's 8 Weeks to Optimum Health on oils - he's got the science to back him up, and he was one of the first public voices to speak out against trans fats over 10 years ago - way before the mainstream health community started rallying against it.  He sites several studies that were new at the time, but that are now universally accepted in this regard.  All the other info I've looked into - all the scientifically backed info anyway, say butter can be safe at room temperature (so long as it's stored covered, somewhere cool and dark, preferable with one of those fancy water seals, for about 6 days maximum).  It takes us about 3 months to go through a stick of butter because I try pretty hard to avoid saturated fat to begin with, so I store it in my freezer or fridge.  I figure that since it was exposed to room temp while wrapped and in the covered/dark butter section of my fridge that it's fine.  My grandma (like probably all grandmas) kept her butter out all the times, but I always think it's the little advances like the growing study of fats in our diets that have lead to longer life spans over generations.  If you search "fat oxidation" or "butter oxidation" there's lots of studies out there to check out.  When I read everything I could about it, I came to the conclusion that the only reason to keep butter out of the fridge is if you're consuming it fairly quickly, and I don't know about you, but "butter" and "consuming quickly" don't fit into a healthy lifestyle in my mind.  It can be tricky to remember to take out the amount I need before hand on the rare occasions I need softened butter, but usually I can remember, or I can cheat and put it in the microwave for a few seconds.

[chuanoplast]

I did not know hoisin sauce had to be refrigerated.