35-year-old woman leaves family dinner after her sister, who has a history of ‘horrible food hygiene’, uses a knife that touched raw chicken on other dinner materials: ‘This could make someone sick’

Author image for Lana DeGaetano
Lana DeGaetano • "Show me to me please."
May 24, 2025 10:00 PM EDT

Food safety is a must if you want to host dinner parties for your loved ones—it's easy to think you've got the whole hosting thing figured out, but your guests shouldn't catch you cutting up bread with the same, unwashed knife that you used to dice some chicken thighs. When you decide to host folks for dinner, you're signing a moral contract to ensure their safety when it comes to the food you're serving them. Do they pass out at the slightest hint of peanuts? Is your aunt's new boyfriend a vegetarian like the last three were? These are the questions you should be asking—someone might get sick if you end up preparing something poorly or just plain wrong.

The woman who uploaded this next story explains that her sister has terrible "food hygiene." This means that she purposely refuses to partake in the proper preparation of foods; washing hands, switching knives, and the like. The woman ends up leaving her sister's dinner party because she used a raw chicken knife on some bread, which, if you didn't know, is a big food no-no. Scroll below to see how her family reacts.

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  • I'd like to think most people know how to prepare food without risking major gastro illnesses. If more people refuse to take proper precautions and necessary steps to make a hearty, safe meal, we'd all probably have perished from salmonella or E. coli. That's scary just to think about…

  • Cheezburger Image 10508684544
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • "AITA for leaving a family gathering after seeing my sister's horrible food hygiene?"

    My [35F] family holds a family gathering every year, this year, my sister Sarah [38F] and her husband hosted. Me and Sarah have always argued, she's my
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  • sister and I love her dearly, but there are some parts of her that frustrate me, in particular her laziness around hygiene. Ever since we were kids, she's always
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  • had a very carefree attitude around hygiene, for example she wouldn't wash her hands in the bathroom because it was "just a number one".
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  • This has gotten a little better since entering adulthood, especially after getting married, however it is still a big problem, not out of ignorance but out of
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  • C IIT
    via Zac Gudakov for Unsplash
  • genuine laziness. We spoke a few times in the lead up to the gathering, and I tried to reason with her, she promised everything would be clean, but called me dramatic and seemed to brush my concerns off.
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  • Fast forward to last weekend, everything is going fine, I am helping to prepare the salad while my sister is cutting up some chicken for her husband to grill
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  • up. Suddenly, I see her pick up the same knife she had just been using to cut up the raw chicken and proceed to start cutting up the bread. I asked her what she
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  • thinks she's doing, to which she just stared at me until I explained. She gave a half-hearted apology and went to wash the knife. At this point I was extremely angry,
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  • not only could this make someone sick, but our other sister who was also at the gathering is vegetarian, and Sarah had promised her that there would be no cross- contamination.
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  • Here is where I think I might have become the AH, I put down what I was doing, grabbed mine and my husbands stuff and went outside.
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  • I explained what had just happened to the rest of the family, apologized for having to go, and me, my husband and our daughter left.
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  • While the rest of the family agreed with my concerns, many of them were upset about the fact we just left, especially as my husband and I were both meant
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  • to be helping with the catering, as well as the fact we get to see each other so rarely. I do feel bad for leaving, but I didn't want to escalate the situation, nor did I want my daughter to get caught up in any arguments, AITA?
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  • Trick_Delivery4609 NTA Don't let her tell you otherwise. That is nasty. And you needed to tell the others so they were aware.
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  • Don't let her host or bring food to anything. Still invite her but serve her plates so she doesn't touch other stuff. She can bring packaged foods or drinks as her contribution.
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  • Hellasummat NTA. You can't control other people. You can only make choices about what you do. You have expressed your concerns and boundaries. Your sister put you in the position of having to enforce them. If anyone argues, suggest they go eat some raw chicken.
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  • RickRussellTX NTA. Your response was perfect and I have no notes.
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  • Condensed_Sarcasm NTA. Your sister's laziness could get somebody sick, or worse. Anybody that thinks otherwise is otherwise is delusional.
    via Condensed_Sarcasm

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family dynamics family drama entitlement chicken cooking reddit story family feud gross food entitled family food sister reddit thread Reddit entitled people meat
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