This isn't a recipe!
CW: contains discussions of disordered eating and stuff that might trigger emetophobia.

In the last two to three years I've mostly overcome what was a lifelong and life-limiting obsession with food hygiene. When I was a little kid I had a multiple-year-long untreated delusion that people were trying to poison me and would have to watch them making my food or I'd FREAK. I was also unable to eat anything my fingers had touched, even if they were clean, so I'd leave little chunks of everything on my plate. As I got older I struggled with avoidance around eating both at home and in public and fears of 'contamination', and I was quite underweight until I hit about 23. I had no energy and constant brain fog. This was also connected with a vomit phobia that I'm mostly through now thanks to some clumsy self-guided ERP, but it lasted a very long time.

Maybe this is something you're going through too, or maybe you're just curious about how someone insane in the membrane in the way that I am can shake something like this off. I've since developed new life-limiting obsessions lol so it's a helpful reminder to me too.

Here are some of the things that helped me:

--> Listening to the Risky or Not? podcast -- if you're able to use this in a non-reassurance-seeking way, I found it really helpful to start thinking about food safety in terms of 'risk' to get past my black-and-white catastrophising, and I think they do a great job of not being patronising and giving actual practically useful assessments of things. I don't love how much chatgpt they use though, it started as a joke I think? But now it's a little overkill. I also like food safety talk, but that's a lot drier and would help you more if you're the kind of person who can prolapse a phobia into a special interest.

--> Having dinner with people who are more freaked-out than me, forcing me to become the bigger person. Sometimes all it takes to get you to try oysters without crying is having a friend who's way more worried than you are. And it was fine in the end. Not a huge oyster fan but I didn't die.

--> Doing exposures, annoyingly... read about people getting sick and then eat something they mentioned. Go on Iwaspoisoned.com and then go to one of the places that someone's reviewed. Cook raw chicken and walk around with gross chicken hands for a bit. If you're really brave, touch towels and doorknobs without cleaning them straight away. Wear the t-shirt that you were wearing the last time you threw up (I KNOW you remember which one it was). Go to a new restaurant and roll a dice to pick what you get from the menu. It's going to feel like you're being beaten to death with hammers BUT it is going to allow you to develop an individual sense of what's valuable risk-assessment and what isn't, and even more importantly to trust that when challenging and scary things happen to you, you will be able to survive it. It's good to get a therapist to help with this, if you can. Otherwise gamifying them can help.

--> Smelling my food!!! This was something I really internalised when my fridge broke and stopped keeping to temp all the time. I still take precautions (I freeze raw meat and leftovers, for example) but you gotta get in there and sniff. You will develop a sense for when something is safe to eat, and you'll be surprised how quickly you learn to trust your own judgement rather than use-by dates. I found June's cooking channel helpful for this, and she's also got a great creative approach to cooking and food waste generally. Eat or Toss is also a helpful reference point if you're starting from absolute zero and feeling a bit intimidated.