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> it'll stay cold enough on its own for a day without power as long as you don't open it much.

Food in an unpowered fridge will be unsafe within 4 hours: https://www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/food-safety-du...



So when you have the pack of cheese on the table at 19°C for 45 minutes for perhaps a week before it's used up... you should drive to the hospital? Most of the continent does this as far as I know (having lived in and visited friends around northwestern Europe) and I have yet to hear someone tell a horror story of getting food poisoned after leaving the cheese/salami at room temperature for a cumulative 2 hours

This is not realistic, this is perhaps an "absolutely 100% guaranteed still safe for your baby while it is sick" value, which I guess makes sense for a government agency but they could communicate whom this advice is for

Edit: scrolling further down the table, also cooked pasta, rice, potatoes, vegetables, and sauce should be discarded. These products cooked, so they cooled down through optimal breeding temperatures while you had dinner for an hour, before they even started their journey from room down to fridge temperature. They should be discarded according to this table and never consumed in the first place (explicitly: don't even taste to see if it's still good). Not to mention what spoiled while it was on your plate


That’s much too conservative in opinion, at least around eggs, cheese and dairy.


In the US our store bought eggs are washed and are not safe to store unrefrigerated. If you get your eggs from the back of a hen it's a different story.


After 2 hours above 4C? No way! This is just them being conservative so they don’t get sued.

My fridge is set to 6C, I should have gotten sick long ago then.


> will be unsafe

That is absolute BS - food is considered unsafe after the food itself spends 4 hours above 40*f, so the website you’re linking to assumes a fridge and everything in it immediately warms to 41+* upon losing power? Physics doesn’t work that way….


You've misread the table. 40F for 2 hours is the guideline. A typical fridge is around 35-38F.

Anecdotally my parents had a fridge fail recently and the food heated up alarmingly quickly.


Sounds like your parents fridge was poorly insulated, and thus consumed way more electricity than a modern fridge needs to.


I tried to warn them about french doors...




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