A post about a father refusing to let his kids eat his wife’s food because thinks it was “dangerous for them” has gone viral on Reddit.
In a post shared on Reddit’s “Am I The A****** (AITA)” forum, user Sunny_dayyay, who has a 4-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son with his wife, said he works as a manager at a care home while his wife owns a bakery with her mom.
“My wife cooks all the time because she is much better at cooking than I am. I cook sometimes. She is the one who takes care of the house, kids, and chores,” he wrote in the post which has 19,300 upvotes as of writing.
One day when he came back from work, he began plating up dinner (which was ready when he arrived home) for his kids. While cutting the chicken his wife prepared into smaller pieces, he noticed it “looked a bit pink.” His wife said that “it’s a little pink but it’s fine.”
When he said that he’s “not letting” the kids eat the chicken if it’s pink for fear of food poisoning, she allegedly told him to “stop being a baby and it won’t kill them.”
A Pew Research Center survey of parents with children under the age of 18, conducted between September 15 and October 13, 2015, found that parenting styles differ between moms and dads.
A majority of parents in the United States (62 percent) said “they can sometimes be overprotective,” with nearly 7 in 10 (68 percent) of mothers describing themselves this way, compared with 54 percent of dads.
The study found that 38 percent of the moms and half of the dads surveyed believe “they sometimes stick to their guns too much.”
Is it safe to eat pink chicken?
According to the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), “Safely cooked poultry can vary in color from white to pink to tan…all the meat—including any that remains pink—is safe to eat as soon as all parts reach at least 165°F as measured with a food thermometer.”
The pink hue can occur because of chemical changes during the cooking process.
“Oven gases in a heated gas or electric oven react chemically with hemoglobin in the meat tissues to give it a pink tinge…older poultry may be pink in spots where fat is absent from the skin,” the USDA said. “Also, nitrates and nitrites, which are often used as preservatives or may occur naturally in the feed or water supply used, can cause a pink color.”
The father in the Reddit post said he kept telling his wife that the chicken is “pink in the middle” and that their kids shouldn’t eat this as “they can get food poisoning and “it’s dangerous for them.”
After his wife told him that he could “cook their dinner” if he was so concerned, he made cheese and ham toasties for the kids. His wife did not eat the one he made for her.
“She told me she isn’t talking to me if I think her cooking is horrible. I don’t think it’s horrible, I just didn’t want our kids eating that. I told her to stop thinking she was right,” he wrote.
‘More going on here than the cooking of chicken’
Family attorney Sheryl Dennis, who is a parent coordinator at Fields & Dennis law practice in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and Hugh Ferguson, a licensed mental health counselor and family law attorney at Fields & Dennis, told Newsweek: “There is much more going on here than the cooking of chicken.”
If the husband was in a therapy session, the questions asked would have included “Why didn’t he simply put the chicken in the microwave for a minute or so if he thought it was not completely cooked? Why did he have to make a completely new dinner?” they said.
“It appears he was very invested in the wife admitting she had not properly prepared the dinner with his comment to her to ‘stop thinking she was right’ and the underlying ‘noise’ in this relationship is palpable.
“We could go on with other issues that are evident such as dinner on the table when he arrived home, cutting the food for a 4 and 7-year-old, the wife working, taking care of the house, kids and chores—these all are indicative of underlying issues.”
Life coach Joseph Coston told Newsweek: “We need to approach the shared scenario from two angles. The first is the safety of the children, and the second is the need to keep the peace with the person with whom you share parenting responsibilities.”
Coston said that instead of turning to toasties, simply reheating the cut-up chicken in the microwave or on the stovetop, would have “validated and rectified” the original poster’s original concern about putting their children’s health at risk.
“Inadvertently, you put the idea into your wife’s head that her cooking was unfit when you chose a questionably less healthy substitute for what your wife had taken the time to prepare,” he said.
The latest post sparked debate among users on Reddit, with some siding with the mom and others backing Sunny_dayyay. The subreddit ultimately ruled that he was, indeed, “the a******.”
In a comment that got 31,000 upvotes, Reddit user MaybeAWalrus asked: “why didn’t you just put the chicken back in the oven ?! In the meantime, YTA (you’re the a******)…instead of just saying ‘oh honey, I am worried the chicken is a little pink, can we cook it just a little more just to be safe?,’ you went all the way ‘I am not serving that to the kids!!!!’ and made a new meal altogether.”
Redditor rpsls said: “…Would make sense for a professional chef like OP’s wife to be able to cook chicken optimally. But even if it was, still YTA for the reaction. If you’re that worried and untrusting, nuke it for a minute.”
Reddit user LDel3 wrote: “‘It’s a bit pink in the middle isn’t a condescending remark. OP’s wife being a baker isn’t relevant in the slightest, cooking chicken isn’t related to her profession at all. NTA (not the a******) OP, it’s perfectly fine to take potential food poisoning seriously.”
Newsweek reached out to Sunny_dayyay for comment.
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