If I do that search on Google right now, the top result is the National Pork Board (pork.org): ad-free, pop-up free, waffle-free and with the correct answer in large font at the top of the page. It's in F, but I always stick " C" at the end of temperature queries. In this case that makes the top result foodsafety.gov which is equally if not more authoritative, also ad-, waffle-, and popup- free and with with the answer immediately visible.

Meanwhile the AI overview routinely gives me completely wrong information. There's zero chance I'm going to trust it when a wrong answer can mean I give my family food poisoning.

I agree that there is a gigaton of crap out there, but the quality information sources are still there too. Google's job is to list those at the top and it actually has done so this time, although I'll acknowledge it doesn't always and I've taken to using Kagi in preference for this reason. A crappy AI preview that can't be relied on for anything isn't an acceptable substitute.

Google could have cut down on this if they wanted. And in general they did until they fired Matt Cutts.

The reality is, every time someone's search is satisfied by an organic result is lost revenue for Google.

>The problem is that SEO has made it hard to find trustworthy sites in the first place.

We should remember that's partly Google's fault as well. They decided SEO sites were OK.

AI is being influenced by all that noise. It isn’t necessarily going to an authoritative source, it’s looking at Reddit and some SEO slop and using that to come up with the answer.

We need AI that’s trained exclusively on verified data and not random websites and internet comments.

Please find a trusted source of information for food safety information.

It's genuinely harder than it's ever been to find good information on the internet, but when you're dealing with food safety information, it's really worth taking the extra minute to find a definitive source.

https://www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/safe-minimum-i...

I don’t know. I searched for how many chapters a popular manga has on Google and it gave me the wrong answer (by an order of magnitude). I only found out later and it did really piss me off because I made a trek to buy something that never existed. I should’ve known better.

I don’t think this is substantively different from cooking temperature, so I’m not trusting that either.

> Btw, "What temperature should a food be cooked to" is a classic example of something where lots of people and lots of sources repeat incorrect information, which is often ignored by people who actually cook. Famously, the temp that is often "recommended" is only the temp at which bacteria/whatever is killed instantly

I love this reply because you support your own point by repeating information that is technically incorrect.

To qualify myself, I have a background in food service. I've taken my "Food Safe" course in Ontario which is not legally mandated to work in food service, but offered by our government-run health units and many restaurants require a certificate to be employed in any food handling capacity (wait staff or food prep).

There is no such thing as "killed instantly." The temperature recommendations here in Canada, for example, typically require that the food be held at that temperature for a minimum of 15 seconds.

There is some truth in what you say. Using temperature to neutralize biological contaminants is a function of time and you can certainly accomplish the same result by holding food at lower temperature for a longer period of time. Whether this makes the food "taste better" or not depends on the food and what you're doing.

Sous Vide cooking is the most widely understood method of preparation where we hold foods at temperatures that are FAR lower than what is typically recommended, but held for much longer. I have cooked our family Thanksgiving Turkey breast at 60C sous vide, and while I personally like it... others don't like the texture. So your mileage may vary.

My point is that you're making a bunch of claims that have grains of truth to them, but aren't strictly true. I think your comment is an application of the dunning kruger effect. You know a little bit and because of that you think you know way more than you actually do. And I had to comment because it is beautifully ironic. Almost as if that paragraph in your comment is, itself, AI slop lol

Doesn't even have to be "better", just "different". The classic one is whether you should refrigerate eggs, which has diametrically opposite answers.

But anything that actually matters could be politicized at any time. I remember the John Gummer Burger Incident: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/369625.stm , in the controversy over whether prion diseases in beef (BSE) were a problem.

what a cringe comment

It’s just the ChatGPT translation, and it’s a literal one. That said, I’ve never heard that phrase in German either.

You're getting lots of thermometer answers, so I'm going to give the opposite: I'm also on team "looks good to me" + "cooking time on packet" + "just cut it and look"

Many people wing dishes that they've prepared 100s of times. Others rarely make the same recipe twice. Neither are correct or incorrect, but the latter is very much going to measure everything they're doing carefully (or fail often).

What sort of world you must live in to find using a food thermometer "really weird"

For something safety critical like a burger, yes.

For whole meats, it's usually safe to be rare and you can tell that by feel, though a thermometer is still useful if you aren't a skilled cook or you are cooking to a doneness you aren't familiar with.

Why wouldn't I? It takes a few seconds and my thermometer just sits on fridge.

I think your reference pool is just small. I absolutely use it for meat and especially for ground meat, which has a much higher chance of contamination.

thermometers were recommended by folks like alton brown and kenji to get really consistent results.

i havent heard it for burgers, but steaks for sure.

People are downvoting you because you’ve come onto a website populated by engineers and called someone weird for using objective measurements.

It’s a pretty good billion dollar idea, I think you’ll do well. In fact I bet you’ll make money hand over fist, for years. You could hire all the best engineers and crush the competition. At that point you control the algorithm that everyone bases their websites on, so if you were to accidentally deploy a series of changes that incentivized low quality contentless websites… it wouldn’t matter at all; not your problem. Now that the quality of results is poor, but people still need their queries answered, why don’t you provide them the answers yourself? You could keep all the precious ad revenue that you previously lost when people clicked on those pesky search results.

This should be the top comment! Thank you for posting it because I'm starting to worry that I'm the only one who realizes how ridiculous this all is.

The problem is that 129F is a borderline safe temperature at any length of time. 3-4hrs is closer to what you want to kill _all_ the salmonella and e coli, but 2hrs kills enough that it's very likely to be safe, and 129F isn't a sufficient temperature for any length of time to kill clostridium perfringens and other similar bacteria, resulting in spoilage occasionally with a greatly increased likelihood the longer you cook it.

Separately, yes, you do normally sear it afterwards. It's for flavor/appearence/texture reasons though, and a number of people recommend mildly chilling it (say, for 15min or so) first so that you don't overcook any of the interior from the sear. The pan should be much hotter than a lot of people expect.

The only advantage is the automatic unit conversion, and that introduces a second point where the summary can get it wrong. If the source gives an incorrect answer then the AI summary is just going to repeat it, if you’re lucky.

The link quoted does not have that text so what are you on about?

However that site gives the temperature for Pork as 71C which is not what USDA says but is correct. So using the USDA recommendation does have a risk according to at least Canada and UK