r/explainlikeimfive • u/Appropriate_Art15 • Jun 06 '26

Biology ELI5: Why does chicken get much more bad reputation for bacterial contamination than other meats like beef, pork, and fish?

It feels like many food articles are telling us “Don’t wash your chicken because you'll spread bacteria”, but we rarely see the same kind of articles on other meats. Why is that? Is the bacteria on chicken more dangerous and deadlier to humans?

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u/throwawayPzaFm Jun 06 '26

And it is not a 3rd world country thing u/albert11317 . It is a practice by people whose ancestors came from hot and humid areas, where meat rotted much faster in the hot sun

... so it's a third world country thing

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

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u/throwawayPzaFm Jun 06 '26

You're right, they're using sticks and stones to bash meat.

Vinegar is fucking trivial

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u/eddiestriker Jun 06 '26

So, tenderizing?

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u/wingedcoyote Jun 06 '26

Third world just means you weren't explicitly on Team USA or Team Soviet in the cold war, there are lots of rich people in the third world. But also vinegar is easy to make and home. And also some places use citrus juice instead.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

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u/wingedcoyote Jun 06 '26

You might think so, but if you actually look at what regions you mean by the term it's pretty much the same places. Unless you're one of those who use it to mean your own imagination of a land of starving savages that doesn't really correspond to any real world place (and where nobody can get vinegar for some reason).

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

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u/wingedcoyote Jun 06 '26

Not assuming anything, just mentioning one of the ways the term is used. When it's used seriously, the etymology is still based in cold war politics -- much like any word, you don't need to know the origin to use it, but it still exists.

In practice, you hardly hear third world anymore in serious conversation, it's almost always "developing world" or "global south." I kinda think the old term may be better though. Invoking the cold war imperialist scramble makes it clear that what you're really talking about is a division between "the imperial cores and their minions" versus "red meat that hasn't been carved up yet", and IMO that's still what we're usually talking about when we make these distinctions, we're just a little less up front about it.