How someone operates the own kitchen is their choice, but it can be pretty frustrating when they bring their own disfunction to your home. Everyone has their own preferences, but that doesn’t change basic biology and food safety rules. At the same time, it can be rather hard to communicate this to folks who are in your family.
A woman asked the internet if she went too far when she decided that both she and her one year old would not eat her mother-in-law’s dinner after seeing an entire raw chicken just sitting in a sink. We reached out to the daughter-in-law who made the post and will update the article when she gets back to us.
Raw chicken shouldn’t just be left around everywhere
Image credits: gpointstudio / Envato (not the actual photo)
So one woman refused to eat at her MIL’s house when she saw what was in the sink
She clarified some details later
Image credits: MegiasD / Envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: ShesInterrupted
There is some evidence that raw chicken can be a risk if just left around
Image credits: Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
The kitchen sink is often seen as a place of cleansing. It is where dirty dishes go to be redeemed and where vegetables are rinsed of their earthy past. However, in this story, the kitchen sink became the setting for a biological horror scene that would make a health inspector weep. A mother-in-law decided that the best place to prep raw, defrosted chicken was directly on the stainless steel surface of the sink. No bowl. No plate. Just naked poultry lounging near a baby’s bottle for an hour.
The poster, a young mother, was horrified. Her mother-in-law and boyfriend, however, accused her of overreacting. They claimed she was just trying to start drama. Let us put aside the family dynamics for a moment and look at this through the lens of food safety science. Was she overreacting? The short answer is absolutely not. The kitchen sink is essentially a bacterial nightclub. It is wet, often has food particles, and is rarely sanitized as thoroughly as we think. When you introduce raw chicken directly to this environment, you are creating a perfect storm for cross-contamination.
The CDC explicitly advises against washing raw chicken or rinsing it in the sink. This is because the splash radius of bacteria can reach up to three feet. That means the invisible mist of Salmonella and Campylobacter is coating everything nearby. In this story, the chicken was not just being washed. It was sitting there. This creates a direct transfer of pathogens to the sink surface. If baby bottles or pacifiers are sitting in that same sink, they are now potential carriers of Salmonella. This is not a minor “oops” moment. It is a legitimate health hazard.
The poster mentioned the chicken sat there for about an hour. Food safety standards define the “Danger Zone” as temperatures between 40°F and 140°F (4°C to 60°C respectively). Bacteria can double in number in as little as 20 minutes within this range. While one hour is technically within the two-hour safety window for leaving food out, the context matters. The real danger here is not just the time. It is the surface. Bacteria can form biofilms on sink surfaces. These are sticky layers of microorganisms that are resistant to standard rinsing. If the mother-in-law just rinsed the sink with water afterwards, those pathogens would likely remain. The poster was 100% correct to scrub it with boiling water and soap.
Just because it worked “for you” doesn’t mean it’s a universal rule
Image credits: hui sang / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
The most critical aspect of this story is the baby. The immune systems of infants and children under five are still developing. They are not miniature adults. They are significantly more susceptible to foodborne illnesses. For a healthy adult, Salmonella might mean a few miserable days near the toilet. For an infant, it can be life-threatening. It can lead to bacteremia (bacteria in the blood) or even meningitis. The poster was protecting her child from a very real threat. The fact that the baby’s dishes were in the splash zone makes the mother-in-law’s casual approach even more egregious.
The boyfriend and mother-in-law relied on the classic “we have always done it this way and we are fine” argument. This is known as survivor bias. Just because you drove without a seatbelt in the 80s and survived does not mean it is safe. The mother-in-law’s offense at the poster refusing to eat the food is a common social friction point. However, food safety is not a matter of etiquette. It is a matter of biology. You cannot negotiate with bacteria. You cannot guilt-trip E. coli into being less infectious.
The poster did not overreact. She reacted appropriately to a high-risk situation. Refusing to eat the “sink chicken” was a rational choice. Sanitizing the sink was a necessary chore. Her only mistake might have been thinking she could explain germ theory to people who think the kitchen sink is a marinade bowl. In the end, the young mother wins this round of logic. It is better to have an offended mother-in-law than a hospitalized infant. And perhaps, as a peace offering, she can buy her mother-in-law a very nice, very large mixing bowl.
Some readers had questions
Many thought her reaction was warranted
A few thought she was overreacting
