What bothers me more is when they bag household products. The other day at Safeway they bagged my box of dryer sheets, as if there would be any way for those to leak into my groceries.

you are right op

Aren't you washing your strawberries before you eat them, anyway. Fruit and vegetable fields aren't sterile places and who knows what rodent ran across that cereal box before you put it in the bag with your strawberries.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also put it all in the same bag. The chicken is sealed in plastic!

Which often leaks or has been leaked on. All over your fresh strawberries

That's why I put it into another plastic bag at the meat case. And then it goes into the same shopping bag as everything else. I've been doing this for decades, and nothing has leaked all over my fresh strawberries yet.

Which means you've already bagged it in another bag...sigh. DP.

I bag my own groceries in a reusable bag that fits way more than store bags. Because it has structure it’s easy to keep things apart. I bagged groceries for years so I’m very good at it.

Raw meat, like chicken, or fish, and eggs, etc absolutely should be bagged separately. People often think that if it's in a plastic package that the bacteria is contained inside. Studies show that the outside of the package often is cross contaminated with ecoli and dangerous bacteria like Campylobacter which can cause a paralyzing condition called Guillain-Barré. I've even had packages delivered with meat hanging out. Food handling laws require that ready to eat foods are not stored near raw meats, so supermarkets technically should bag them separately, regardless of the customer's preference, for legal reasons.

As for the old adage about people's anscestors not dying of this, that's absolute rubbish. My cousin died from Guillan-Barre, and a friend developed a life-threatening complication from this kind of food poisoning and now has chronic renal disease. Certain autoimmune diseases like RA have been recently linked to bad bacteria found on raw meat. The reason we live longer is that we take reasonable precautions.

I avoid putting it in with fruits and vegetables, but no reason to be in its own bag (it is in plastic and then another plastic bag already).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also put it all in the same bag. The chicken is sealed in plastic!

+1 You know your ancestors survived a lot worse. You’re much more likely to die driving home from the grocery store or from an obesity related disease related to too much fried chicken. Chill out.

My ancestors didn’t eat factory farmed poultry contaminated with ecoli. I’ll put it in a separate bag to be safe.

True, are ancestors had to deal with the Plague instead

Usually if you’ve brought reusable bags they will ask to make sure you’re ok with any plastic bags at all. If I’ve forgotten my bags and they’re bagging in plastic anyway, they don’t ask.

See, OP, this is why the employee asked what you wanted. And you were annoyed at someone being polite!

Your grocery store bags for you?

Anonymous wrote:Does it matter if you are going to eat kabobs?

OP here. I would have no problem putting chicken in a grocery bag with ingredients I’m grilling or cooking. I would not put it in a grocery bag with, say, lettuce.

If I haven't, the clerk wraps it in it's own bag before putting it with everything else.

Separate bags^^

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought everyone separated raw meat into its own bag! Okay.

This is relatively recent. Growing up in the late 80s/early 90s, I remember grocery shopping with mom and clerks never asked - raw meat went with the other goods in the same bag. Unlikely that it went with the strawberries, as the cold foods traveled together so it was likely with the frozen goods. I feel
like people got a lot more aware and careful of everything right when hand sanitizer became commercially popular and people starting thinking about germs.

Separate Baganda may be recent but I remember nearly 40 years ago as a teen checkout clerk that we hadn’t separate plastic bags at the counter to Meant to put all meat and fish into before we put everything into the brown paper bag.