Simple advice to not have too many food poisoning.

[BladeofSharpness]

I have a kitchen with wooden floor (have no silver for silver tiles), it is also used as a dining room, but the floor is cleaned before cooking. My main cook is level 5. I know that's not great, but well I get probably 25% food poisoning !

Any advice on how to improve the odds? I store also the raw food on dirt, can it be contamined BEFORE being cooked?

[Vintorez]

The most guaranteed way is to use a nutrient paste dispenser, no food poisoning chance at all with it.

Beyond that, don't use berries as they are considered a dangerous food type and carry a higher risk. Iirc this risk applies even when cooked.

Don't keep your butcher table in the same room as the stove, it has a a built in cleanliness penalty.

Food doesn't get contaminated, no need to worry about that. If you cook in batches of four though, all four meals will cause food poisoning. You can try to forbid the other meals after the first case, don't forget ones picked up by your pawns.

There will always be a tiny poisoning chance, just keep training up your cooks, 5 isn't high enough to reach that minimum.

[Monty]

A pawn needs level 8 cooking skill to remove their chance of creating meals with food poison.

Adding a poisoned meal to a stack of meals in storage will cause all meals in the stack to have a food poison chance. This is something i learned only recently when my cook was level 15 and still poisoning everyone as the original stack of food was never completely used up.

When building a kitchen another thing to keep in mind is that food poison chance when cooking food does not increase until the room cleanliness drops to -2. If you have dirt floors a pawn will never track trash or dirt into your kitchen so it will always remain at -1. Just keep an eye out for blood being tracked everywhere.

[BladeofSharpness]

Ah darn, for the contamination... Makes a pain to trace this kind of stuff.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Vintorez:

Beyond that, don't use berries as they are considered a dangerous food type and carry a higher risk. Iirc this risk applies even when cooked.

This isn't the case. Berries have the same 2% food poisoning chance when eaten raw as any other crop, and that chance is not a factor once cooked.

Originally posted by Monty:

A pawn needs level 8 cooking skill to remove their chance of creating meals with food poison.

At cooking skill 9 colonists reach the minimum value for food poisoning chance, which is 0.1% and it never goes below that. There is always a small risk for food poisoning with cooked meals, unless you get the implant that prevents it.

Originally posted by Monty:

Adding a poisoned meal to a stack of meals in storage will cause all meals in the stack to have a food poison chance.

Yes, when a poisoned meal is cooked that meal has a 100% chance to poison, when added to a stack of 9 existing meals with 0% chance to poison the chance is averaged out and it becomes 10 meals each with a 10% chance to cause food poisoning. As meals are taken from that stack and new ones added it continues to average eventually dropped the stack into a trivial food poisoning chance.

Overall if one meal is poisoned though one colonist will get sick, on average, you don't really have to worry about the stack mechanic. Sometimes you get unlucky and multiple people will become sick from the same contaminated stack, but other times you are lucky and a poisoned meal ends up not poisoning anyone.

What can make food poisoning chance seem higher or streaky is batch meals as Vintorez mentioned. A batch of 4 meals cooked at once can all be poisoned, added to a stack of 6 that becomes a stack of 10 meals with 40% food poisoning chance, again on average 4 people will get sick from that, in a short period of time, but sometimes you get unlucky and it's more like 6-8 at once.

[ichifish]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Vintorez:

Beyond that, don't use berries as they are considered a dangerous food type and carry a higher risk. Iirc this risk applies even when cooked.

This isn't the case. Berries have the same 2% food poisoning chance when eaten raw as any other crop, and that chance is not a factor once cooked.

Originally posted by Monty:

A pawn needs level 8 cooking skill to remove their chance of creating meals with food poison.

At cooking skill 9 colonists reach the minimum value for food poisoning chance, which is 0.1% and it never goes below that. There is always a small risk for food poisoning with cooked meals, unless you get the implant that prevents it.

Originally posted by Monty:

Adding a poisoned meal to a stack of meals in storage will cause all meals in the stack to have a food poison chance.

What can make food poisoning chance seem higher or streaky is batch meals as Vintorez mentioned. A batch of 4 meals cooked at once can all be poisoned, added to a stack of 6 that becomes a stack of 10 meals with 40% food poisoning chance, again on average 4 people will get sick from that, in a short period of time, but sometimes you get unlucky and it's more like 6-8 at once.

I did not realize that about batch meals. That explains why I occasionally get multiple food poisonings during the mid/late game with high level cooks. I use the freezer primarily for backup meals and have cooks/haulers deliver directly to the dining room shelf, so those stacks often run down to zero or near zero.

Thanks for that insight!

[VoiD]

It's ok, what goes in comes out

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Vintorez:

Beyond that, don't use berries as they are considered a dangerous food type and carry a higher risk. Iirc this risk applies even when cooked.

This isn't the case. Berries have the same 2% food poisoning chance when eaten raw as any other crop, and that chance is not a factor once cooked.

It's still worth pointing out because pawns won't complain about eating raw berries (or milk) but they have the same food poisoning chance as any other uncooked food.

[LIMP BISQUICK]

Decent size kitchen, no butcher table, keep clean. Could skill up by focusing on butchering or making kibble. Can also restrict meal types so they won't eat what you're cooking. Might be ideal to do something like pemmican and sell it, exchange for meals with traders.

[BladeofSharpness]

Is Pemmican poison-safe? I don't want to use a nutrient dispenser!

Also, is poisoning linked to how the raw resources was stored or is only a function of the conditions of the preparation?

[Diarmuhnd]

Originally posted by BladeofSharpness:

...
Any advice on how to improve the odds? I store also the raw food on dirt, can it be contamined BEFORE being cooked?

Mostly I made my kitchen a dead end room so it would not have any through traffic. Only the chefs & janitors go into the kitchen and all the food and prepared meals are stored in a nearby room. This room only had stoves, nothing else, maybe some art to make it beautiful for that mood buff. Also the kitchen had to be swept clean before starting to cook, that makes the biggest difference.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by BladeofSharpness:

Is Pemmican poison-safe?

No.

Also, is poisoning linked to how the raw resources was stored or is only a function of the conditions of the preparation?

Only the conditions at exactly the moment the meal is finished matters.

[LIMP BISQUICK]

Originally posted by BladeofSharpness:

Is Pemmican poison-safe? I don't want to use a nutrient dispenser!

Also, is poisoning linked to how the raw resources was stored or is only a function of the conditions of the preparation?

I think pemmican might be safe or very rare, can't remember. Food storage doesn't matter neither does hp. It's mainly prep and skill. I don't think injuries/pawn condition plays a part in food poisoning.

[BladeofSharpness]

Just wanted to provide a quick update that moving the butcher bench outside the kitchen has made a MASSIVE difference in food poisoning occurrence. Just that, nothing else.

I don't know what is the modifier, but for the future generations reading me ... IT IS IMPORTANT! :-)

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by BladeofSharpness:

Just wanted to provide a quick update that moving the butcher bench outside the kitchen has made a MASSIVE difference in food poisoning occurrence. Just that, nothing else.

I don't know what is the modifier, but for the future generations reading me ... IT IS IMPORTANT! :-)

Yeah, I recall this coming up in a recent discussion. The butchers table itself counts as 'dirty' and cannot be cleaned - so for the purposes of food poisoning in cooked meals, it will always contribute to the average room cleanliness.
Best practice is to have the stove and butchers table separated by walls+doors, or make the room larger to dilute the average if they must be near one another.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by BladeofSharpness:

(have no silver for silver tiles)

Since no one talked about this: Steel tiles are exactly as clean as silver tiles (0.2). Only sterile tiles are better (0.6).