Abstract The safety of many foods is dependent on ensuring the cold chain until the time of consumption. A weak link is the consumer part of the chain as the temperatures of domestic refrigerators are often too high and the users have limited possibilities to monitor and adjust the temperatures. The aim of this work was to evaluate whether common consumer practices for monitoring that food is kept cold are valid. Consumers demonstrated limited ability to assess food and surface temperature by tactile sense with lower precision at 8 °C compared to 4 °C. Almost 20% of the consumers were able to detect the exact food and surface temperature kept at 4 °C, while at 8 °C only 13% detected the exact temperature. A web-based survey mapping consumer practices showed that more than 40% of consumers never checked the temperature in their refrigerators, 38% rely on food coldness to evaluate if the refrigerator is running at adequate temperature and 65% lack knowledge on how to correctly asses temperature in the fridge. Most of the comments emphasized the situations where consumers could be at risk due to misevaluation of refrigerated food and surfaces real temperature indicating the necessity for better monitorization of cold food chain at domestic level.

中文翻译：

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使用触觉冷感作为食品安全的指标——一个危险的选择

摘要 许多食品的安全性取决于确保冷链直至食用。由于家用冰箱的温度通常过高，用户监控和调节温度的可能性有限，因此链条中的消费者部分是薄弱环节。这项工作的目的是评估消费者监控食品冷藏的常见做法是否有效。与 4 °C 相比，消费者在 8 °C 下通过触觉评估食物和表面温度的能力有限，精度较低。近 20% 的消费者能够检测到准确的食物和保持在 4°C 的表面温度，而在 8°C 时，只有 13% 的消费者能够检测到准确的温度。一项基于网络的消费者实践调查显示，超过 40% 的消费者从未检查过冰箱的温度，38% 的人依靠食物冷度来评估冰箱是否在足够的温度下运行，65% 的人缺乏如何正确评估冰箱温度的知识。大多数评论强调了消费者可能因对冷藏食品和表面真实温度的错误评估而面临风险的情况，这表明有必要在国内层面更好地监控冷食品链。