Does The CDC Recommend Air Frying At 400° Fahrenheit? (The Truth)
There’s been a lot of chatter on the internet about how the CDC recommends that you air fry everything at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
But, is there any merit to this?
In this article, we find out the truth about the statement.
Does the CDC really recommend air frying at 400° Fahrenheit?
The answer is no. The CDC has never created a report that says you should be air frying your food at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. This was actually a meme created by people claiming that the CDC recommended air frying at 400° Fahrenheit.
We’ve researched all of the CDC’s announcements and have found no evidence that they recommend everyone air fry their food at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
So what’s the verdict? It’s not true.
Who was the person who came up with this?
Apparently, the person who came up with this line has a Twitter handle named @Airfryerlady. Her Twitter handle doesn’t seem to have that many followers, and it is quite possible that this is a brand new account set up.
Why is this comment going viral?
So, there’s been a recent meme going on throughout the internet that pokes fun at the CDC. It always starts with “The CDC says…” and then finishes off with something rather obvious or silly.
It’s been known for a while that the CDC has been throwing out recommendations based on Scientific evidence and oftentimes they’ve refrained from saying anything when they’re unsure of it.
We were able to speak to a person who retired from the CDC a few years back mentioning how the organization we’ll come up with plans and workflows on how to agree upon something. There were several different levels of announcements that they approved of and because most of the time there was never a unanimous agreement between the committee, they would always give out the maybe approach.
People are upset at the way the CDC handles things
Our guess is that this frustrated their audience and has since caused an uproar of people just making up things that the CDC never said at all.
The theory here is that the only time the CDC ever mentions something directly is when it’s completely obvious. Something like how the CDC recommends that you air-fry everything at 400 degrees Fahrenheit is a method that almost everyone does anyway.
If you take a look at all the comments from Reddit members, the majority of them already say that they are fry everything and almost anything at 400° Fahrenheit. A few people in the channel don’t understand the meme but most do.
One person argues that the Totino’s Pizza Rolls would never survive under 400 degrees Fahrenheit because they would rupture at such high temperatures.
Is air frying at 400° Fahrenheit an acceptable temperature anyway?
The fact of the matter is that it’s totally fine to air fry the majority of your food at 400° Fahrenheit. However, it’s important to understand that when you’re cooking food at a really high temperature, you have to cook for a less amount of time or else your food would become burnt.
The problem with this is that if you don’t give your food enough time to cook then the heat may not travel to the inside of your food rendering your food uncooked on the inside.
This can actually be pretty dangerous especially if you’re not cooking your chicken or pork thoroughly. You may end up with food poisoning if you don’t cook your food fully.
You have to understand the type of food you’re eating and adjust the temperature and cooking time in order to eat safely.
What does CDC does say about cooking
The CDC doesn’t specifically direct all their cooking instructions to air frying. They recommend cooking at a more General level among all your kitchen appliances by measuring the temperature and time it takes to cook certain types of foods.
You can find more information about this by looking up what they recommend on their food safety site here. You’ll find a downloadable table that you could use to make sure your food is safe and at the right temperature. It doesn’t mention anything, particularly about air fryers.
What the CDC focuses on is the internal temperature of the foods you make. For example, this can involve poultry, which should have an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit, or ground beef, which should have an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
These are all safe internal temperatures that the CDC presumes are hot enough to kill harmful germs that can cause food poisoning.
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