“Who here has had diarrhea before?” Dr. Haley Oliver of Purdue Food Sciences began by asking her audience members this pointed question. “In fact, don’t just raise your hand, stand up. Everyone in the room that has had diarrhea before, stand up. If you’re sitting, you’re lying."

I should have known that I was walking into this when I signed up to attend a talk titled “You think you know what caused your diarrhea…”

Nonetheless, I was completely caught off guard as I shyly stood with the rest of the audience.

Dr. Oliver laughed as she told the audience to sit down and joked about how many times per day she gets to say the word, “diarrhea.”

She wasn’t lying either. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard the word diarrhea so many times in my life, let alone in a professional setting.

Dr. Oliver spent the next 40 minutes or so talking about the difference between food safety and food quality and the misconceptions that consumers have between the two, all while intermixing jokes about food, bacteria, and microbiology.

I never knew science could be so much fun.

Welcome to Dawn or Doom 2016, Purdue University’s annual technology conference, where faculty and guests talk about the evolving world of technology and the risks and rewards associated with handling new technologies.

Dr. Oliver was tasked with tackling the issue of food insecurity, safety, and quality and how it will play a role in the future.

According to Dr. Oliver, food safety issues are caused by bacteria and viruses and when these intermix with our food, foodborne illnesses such as salmonella and norovirus can happen. When we get sick, we’re quick to blame our sickness on food quality issues, like taste or smell.

Dr. Oliver was quick to shoot this notion down, as she describes food quality as a subjective measure that is driven by consumer choices and demand. She also noted that this line that most consumers blur between food safety and food quality is what is leading to much of the food waste and food insecurity in the developed world.

“Most of us live by that sell-by date,” she said.

The FAO says this is because consumers have a careless attitude toward food and because we can afford to, in the developed world.

Dr. Oliver didn’t just give the audience a list of definitions, though. As a food scientist, she broke it down through food—something we can all relate to.

She explained food quality through Limburger cheese.

“You know how it tastes like you’re eating feet?” she asked the audience. “I find Limburger cheese to be low quality. But that doesn’t mean it’s not safe to eat.”

Food safety, she explained with a metaphor about clams.

“I love clams. Ask any of my friends,” she challenged. “But, I know that in eating them, there’s a risk.”

Dr. Oliver then took the audience on a trip through her iPhone, where we played the game, “What item in this picture is the riskiest, from a food safety standpoint?”

It’s harder than it sounds. It turns out we consumers have some misconceptions that are pretty engrained in us.

By the end, the audience figured out that the safe answer was usually lettuce or tomatoes or a variety of fresh vegetable. But, there was more to it than that. Every picture that she showed had a new issue that the audience didn’t think of right away.

The tenderloin at the state fair was most unsafe due to handling. The meat and cheese tray was served on a wooden board. And, the picture of last night’s dinner was room temperature, the perfect environment for bacteria to grow on.

The moldy-looking fruit from Dr. Oliver’s refrigerator was probably safe to eat, she said.

She challenged the audience to think in terms of “Do we have a quality or a safety issue here?”

She wanted the audience to know that the organisms that cause spoilage do not cause disease.

Dr. Oliver then contrasted this consumer view with the food production system in Afghanistan. She showed pictures from her work there and the stark contrast between the American food system and the Afghani food system was evident.

The work that her lab is doing is working on improving the food safety in Afghanistan, but the takeaway for the consumers in the audience was to think twice about how we view food safety.

She reminded the audience that in America, we have the safest food system in the world, due to the technology and research that is dedicated to making it that way.

But that doesn’t mean we can use this irresponsibly. The duty of using this technology is to not be careless about food choices. Consumers need to detangle the lines between food safety and food quality.

We’re quick to blame our illnesses on the sell-by dates or the less-than perfect cosmetic appeal of our food. And we’re quick to throw out anything that doesn’t meet our consumer standard.

We think we know what caused our diarrhea. But do we?