16 Signs You Should Throw Out Your Fast Food Before Eating It

Reliability and consistency are two of the main reasons fast food became so popular in the first place, but not all fast food meals are created equal. As someone who has worked as both a manager and a cook in a multitude of different fast food restaurants and kitchens, I know how wildly the quality of food can vary. If you've ever found yourself regretting eating a fast food meal instead of just throwing it out, you aren't alone.

Thankfully, there are many ways to figure out if you might be about to ingest something dangerous ahead of time, rather than accidentally subjecting your body to an unpleasant and potentially harmful experience. From the atmosphere of a restaurant's lobby to the color or texture of the food on your plate, telltale signs that you should throw out your fast food before eating it do exist. You just have to keep an eye out for them.

Everyone knows the difference between a fresh chicken finger and a chicken finger that has been slowly drying out under a heat lamp for the past 20 minutes. A tougher chew from dried-out meat is one thing, but if your fried food is especially slimy or damp, don't eat it. This is a signal that the food has been cooked incorrectly.

Improperly breading the meat or not heating the oil properly are mistakes everyone makes when frying food at home, but most fast food restaurants should be equipped with industrial fryers. These machines heat and hold the oil at the appropriate temperature and usually come with built-in timers that have been specifically designed for the restaurant's menu items. If your fried food is greasy and gross even with these precautions in place, either it hasn't been cooked long enough or the oil needs to be changed out.

There's nothing wrong with putting some leftovers in the fridge and then eating or repurposing them the next day (for example, some fast food biscuits make great breakfast sandwiches), but it's important to remember that you are working under a limited time window. While it's a common joke to say that a fast food burger feels like it can last forever, the reality is prepared food only stays safe to eat for so long before it needs to be thrown away.

It's obvious to everyone that refrigerated food beginning to grow mold and smell should be tossed. However, even if there are no clear signs you should throw out your food, if it's been over a full week since the meal was cooked, it needs to go. All open or prepared foods should be disposed of after seven days, according to the FDA Food Code, and some (like burger patties and chicken nuggets) really shouldn't be kept longer than four.

Finding out there's no hot water in the bathroom after you place your order is one definite sign you should throw out your fast food before eating it. Hot water is critical to ensuring that you (and the employees currently handling your food) can wash your hands properly. If you can't get any hot water in the bathroom, the sinks in the kitchen and handwashing stations probably don't have any hot water either.

The availability of hot water in a fast food restaurant isn't just important for washing hands. Kitchen utensils and equipment, along with customer-facing products like plastic food trays, need to be continually washed throughout the day. Whether the franchise is using a commercial dishwasher (which needs to be able to reach at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit to properly sanitize items) or employees are washing the equipment manually, keeping hot water available all day long is a must.

Gloves are less common in the food industry than you would think, which is why making sure employees wash their hands between tasks is so important. Even when gloves are worn, those same gloves should never be used for both food preparation and for handling money. In a normal fast food restaurant with good managers and trained staff, this isn't usually a problem. But unfortunately, a sudden rush of orders can cause any kitchen to lax on the rules.

Properly washing your hands to a food service standard takes time. However, no matter what the regulations are, if a large amount of orders come in at once, the kitchen is going to do everything it can to get through them as quickly as possible. It's okay to cut corners in certain situations, but if you see someone wrapping up your fast food with the same unwashed hands they just touched money with, it's best not to eat it.

One way to gauge how much a fast food restaurant cares about the quality of its food is by paying attention to how often it rotates out the sauce packets. Making sure customers have access to up-to-date condiments is one of the easiest things a restaurant can do. If the sauce packets are expired, there's a good chance the food in the kitchen isn't entirely up to standard.

It can be difficult to determine the expiration of fast food condiment packages. Most of them only give that information on the box they are delivered in, which the customer will never see. If there isn't a printed date to check, look at how the packages themselves are holding up. Sauce packets that are extremely puffy for no reason are likely expired, and if you are ever in doubt, you can always open one to test it — just make sure to squirt it onto something other than your food first.

Each fast food restaurant is typically known to have its own distinct smell, whether it's the overwhelming scent of baking dough at Domino's or the salty fragrance of french fries at McDonald's. It would take a pretty large mess (or a long accumulation of small messes) to overpower the smell of food cooking in a small building. But if you order your meal online, and then walk into a store that smells distinctly off, you should skip your fast food meal and just toss it.

Restaurants should only smell either like cleaning supplies or like the food it's serving. A fast food location with a weird odor might be having issues with its sewer system, or perhaps the staff members just aren't performing their cleaning duties properly. Either way, if just walking into the restaurant gives you the urge to gag, the food there doesn't need to be eaten.

Cross-contamination can come in many different forms, and that includes any food items you didn't specifically order for yourself. If you get home and realize you were accidentally given someone else's fast food, throw it out before eating it. Even if it looks like food you would probably enjoy, you have no idea what kind of modifications they might have made to the order.

The umbrella of "fast food you didn't order" also covers things like surprise onion rings or mozzarella sticks appearing in your french fries. It might seem like a harmless bonus, but fries and onion rings should be cooked in separate fryers to avoid having gluten spreading from the breading to the fries. For those who have any sort of gluten intolerance or food allergies, this is especially important to keep in mind.

A fast food restaurant may buy its lettuce pre-chopped and wrapped in plastic bags, but it is still common (and cheaper) for franchises to order whole heads of lettuce instead. Whole heads of lettuce need to be cleaned and cut by the employees, which means it is up to them to ensure all the dirt and pesticides are washed off properly.

When shipped to restaurants, whole lettuce heads typically come straight from whatever farm the franchise has a deal with. They arrive in large cardboard boxes, with each box usually containing 24 heads of lettuce wrapped in a large plastic bag. The lettuce needs to be carefully washed to eliminate all traces of lingering objects, whether that's residual dirt or biological material. Only then should it be cut for prep and service. Finding dirt in your fast food salad means a shortcut has been taken somewhere, and it's a sign you should throw it out.