why potlucks are a BAD IDEA

Well that sucks. I'm sure the bride who chose that for her guests feels like a real A$# right now. Than again, pause, maybe she doesn't feel any blame at all.

Goodness, people who disregard the very real and dangerous threat from food poisoning are crazy. A friend of ours, who is a local Dj, posed a question about his friend who was having a potluck wedding. He thought it was wrong and wanted listener input. I was appalled at the number of people who not only thought it was fine but thought most weddings should be like that. There were a couple of sane people. My favorite comment was "I don't care if it's in the backyard, it's a wedding not a family bbq".

Am I the only one who has never heard of botulism?

My food fears are returning...

Snarky i also never heard of it until now.

My mother had me terrified of botulism when I was a kid. She told me that canned goods were the biggest threats, and if a can was dented, stay away from it. I've never forgotten that. I am terrified of food borne illnesses. I don't do pot lucks -- I just don't. If I'm invited to a pot luck wedding, I'm eating before I get there. Luckily, most of the social events we attend are catered (our social circle is an older crowd. They're generally not interested in cooking for crowds when they can just order).

Not to mention most home kitchens don't exactly have the capacity to keep everything at safe temperatures. And I doubt they rent the correct equipment either, to keep the hot food above 145 and the cold food below 40.

I eat at potlucks, too, but also know everyone who has cooked the food. Sad for that community, though :/

I don't mind office potlucks (we do them annually and I trust and like what people bring), but I can't stand it when the food gets left out all day. The food is safe to eat at a certain temperature. I enjoy the food as soon as it's put out but that's it. I see people grazing the cheese/meat platters or the sour cream dip that has been sitting out for 6-7 hours, and I'm like, "It was nice knowin' ya, Bob!"

It's a risk I suppose

Im certainly not saying a potluck wedding is the way to go (although Ive been to a couple and they were actually fun) but one report out of how many potlucks? Potluck, hotdish, and Saturday afternoon is a normal thing here in Minnesota. There has to be thousands of them going on each day here. Heck, I got food poisening from tacobell once. Id take my chances on a potluck to eat my friend Lindas swedish meatballs every day of the week! :-)

Centerpiece, you're right though. Dented cans are the biggest issue. I used to work at an AIDS food bank, and we had to be really stringent about not giving away dented cans (obviously, with a reduce immune system, botulism would be pretty damn bad.) The dent creates microscopic holes in the metal and allows bacteria into food that's only shelf-stable when sealed.

To this day, I won't eat food out of a dented can.

As my FW and I are planning a wedding in Ohio, the next time my blessed FMIL says that word, I'm making FW text her the link to this. I swear I will hit someone the next time I hear that word.

It's not the mayo; it's the protein mixed in with the mayo.

Totally against potluck weddings, but how often does this really happen? Answer: hardly ever.

So, I'm not a fan of potluck weddings - but totally not for this reason. This is one extremely rare case - it has to be otherwise it wouldn't actually be news!

I'm one of those people who really couldn't care less about this kind of stuff. I would be the person eating from the food that's been left out (if I was hungry) and I regularly eat stuff that's out of date (as in, the date on the package. Because it has 0 to do with the actual expiry of the food. It's a legal thing and nothing more). And I've never had food poisoning once in my 32 years. Like not a single time. Maybe I have a strong stomach or a great immune system, I don't know, but I think there are a lot of scare stories out there.

Apparently it was home-canned potatoes in the potato salad that made people sick: http://wqad.com/2015/04/29/home-canned-potatoes-blamed-for-church-potluck-botulism-outbreak/

My question is, why would someone can potatoes? They keep quite a long time on their own...

My boss told that a quite a few years ago they did a potluck lunch at work and a lot of people got food poisoning from the potato salad. They usually skip the potato salad now.