• Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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    3 months ago

    Always remember what really happened with the McDonald’s lady who sued because her “coffee was too hot”.

    McDonald’s themselves started the campaign that the issue was laughable, and seeded the notion that it’s ridiculous, how could she not know coffee hot?

    What really happened was that the coffee was:

    • Served well above safe ranges to maximize profits, so the coffee could be served longer
    • Was served near boiling temperature
    • Was so hot that it FUSED HER LABIA requiring extensive surgery to repair.

    She sued only for her hospital bills.

    They started a smear campaign against her to convince the public that she was a moron and she just wanted a payday.

    Don’t trust corporations. Ever.

    • FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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      3 months ago

      I dont understand this, coffee is generally made with near boiling hot water. Many coffee machines make the coffee in front of your eyes. Of course its served boiling hot, no?

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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        3 months ago

        Coffee is brewed near boiling, but the hottest it should be served is 60 degrees C, or around 140 degrees F. Basically her temperature was the same as it was literally coming out of the machine, no one takes a big gulp of coffee the second it comes out of the machine.

        McDonalds kept their coffee as hot as possible to give the illusion it was fresher than it was. By keeping the coffee at 190-200F then they believed that customers would feel that the coffee was fresher, even though they knew it was unsafe to serve coffee that hot.

        Larger places follow the same rules here, while coffee is brewed extremely hot it usually tests for a bit before serving unless a customer explicitly asks for it. In restaurants it’s served for you. Even Starbucks most of their drinks are milk based which cools the coffee, except for Americanos which are just espresso and hot water, and you’ll usually see those with an insulator cup to highlight that

        Found this, which explains serving coffee better than I can. https://mtpak.coffee/2022/08/takeaway-cups-coffee-temperature-ideal-serving/

        https://www.caoc.org/?pg=facts

        McDonald’s admitted it had known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years. The risk had repeatedly been brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits.

        • FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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          3 months ago

          Many places here you get your coffee straight from the machine that brews it (as in you press the button yourself), far too hot to drink immediately.

    • The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.worldOPM
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      3 months ago

      What’s that old quote? “A lie can make it around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes”, or something like that? I believe that was pre-internet too.

      It also happens with politics. I constantly see provocative headlines get lots of attention in one circle, and then the later corrections only get passed around in the opposite circle, if at all.

    • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Also, she got second degree burns, and she was not the first person to be injured by the coffee, and McDonald’s was told multiple times that they served their coffee too hot.

      During the trial, McDonald’s showed zero care for the the people they injured, to the point that most of the fine that McDonald’s ended up paying was punitive damages

      • JordanZ@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Third degree burns…. It was brutal. The pictures are out there for those that want to search.

        The coffee that burned Stella Liebeck was dangerously hot—hot enough to cause third-degree burns, even through clothes, in three seconds. Liebeck endured third-degree burns over 16 percent of her body, including her inner thighs and genitals—the skin was burned away to the layers of muscle and fatty tissue. She had to be hospitalized for eight days, and she required skin grafts and other treatment. Her recovery lasted two years.

        Source

        • shrugs@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Tbh, I don’t get it. How can a coffee, that can be max 100°C cause such burns? I would have never believed hot/boiling water is that dangerous, without that story.

          • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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            3 months ago

            Well, scalding hot water, some of the hottest you are legally allowed to have set out of a water heater, is about 130 degrees F, or 54 degrees C. That will scald you in a few seconds.

            Her coffee was near double that. So, ice at 0, can burn you at 54, and then around 100 degrees… Yeah.

          • Avanera@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            I mean, it’s easy to believe when you consider what might happen if you put your hand into a boiling pot of pasta, for example.

          • bran_buckler@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Boiling water is extremely dangerous! Water at 140°F (60°C) will cause a serious burn in 3 seconds. Even water at 120°F (49°C) will cause a serious burn within 10 minutes. Source

            • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social
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              3 months ago

              TIL, videos saying “cook meat at 180°” actually meant 180°F and not 180°C.

              Now I have to check what my induction stove means when it reads 180 in deep frying mode.

          • SoJB@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            That’s literally a temperature you would cook meat with

            What do you think people are made of?

            • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social
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              3 months ago

              TIL, videos saying “cook meat at 180°” actually meant 180°F and not 180°C.

              Now I have to check what my induction stove means when it reads 180 in deep frying mode.

              • lad@programming.dev
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                3 months ago

                Afaik it means °C usually, but when boiling meat it will be cooked at 100°C give or take.

                But since well done steak is supposed to be 71°C, everything hotter than that would sooner or later cook the meat.

                • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social
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                  3 months ago

                  Considering that Google says 350°F - 375°F for deep frying and that I am in a °C country, I would lean more this way.

                  Of course, I have never cooked meat and have no idea what deep frying meat at 180°C would do.

              • XTL@sopuli.xyz
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                3 months ago

                Hot air/gas, hot water/liquid, and a hot solid behaved very differently. The numbers depend a lot on what’s being measured. There’s also a big variable of time.

                • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social
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                  3 months ago

                  The cheap induction stove is not really measuring anything.

                  Its PWM has been tuned to get to the temperature the user selects, under whatever testing conditions they had while R&D. The displayed temperature is just the user selected temperature.

                  But setting it to 120(whatever unit) manages to make good enough french fries, so that’s fine by me.

    • Nommer@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Not to mention they were warned many times before about serving coffee that’s too hot. The woman got such a huge settlement because the judge was tired of McDonald’s crap

      • butwhyishischinabook@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Also they calculated the cost of lawsuits like that and decided they would make more money selling it that hot than they would lose in lawsuits over how hot the coffee was.