Thermometer Use Surveys: Why Consumers Skip Them

The Thermometer Gap: Everyone Knows, Almost Nobody Does

The study: Kosa, K.M., Cates, S.C., Godwin, S., and Chambers, E. IV. 2017. “Barriers to using a food thermometer when cooking poultry at home: results from a national survey.” Food Protection Trends 37(2):116–125 — a nationally representative Web-enabled panel survey of 1,504 U.S. adult grocery shoppers on raw poultry handling and thermometer use; with Maughan, C., Godwin, S., Chambers, D. and Chambers, E. IV. 2016. “Recipe modification improves food safety practices during cooking of poultry.” Journal of Food Protection 79(8):1436–1439 — the 155-consumer observational study on food safety instructions in recipes.

The food thermometer is the cheapest, most effective food safety tool in the kitchen — and consumers overwhelmingly don’t use it. A nationally representative survey of 1,504 American grocery shoppers documented the gap with unusual precision: about 62 percent reported owning a thermometer, but ownership collapsed into non-use the moment the cooking got specific. Among owners, most used one for whole turkeys (73.2 percent) and whole chickens (56.7 percent) — the big, intimidating roasts where people already feel uncertain. For turkey breasts it fell to 42.6 percent; for chicken breasts and other parts, 26.3 percent; for patties made with raw ground poultry, just 11.7 percent. The smaller and more routine the item, the more doneness was judged by eye.

Why the thermometer stays in the drawer

The survey’s non-users weren’t defiant — they were unconvinced and unsure. Many reported using another method to judge doneness, expressed concerns about how to use a thermometer, or questioned the ease and practicality of it. That tracks with what observational studies keep finding: in home-kitchen studies, most cooks determine “fully cooked” by appearance, and appearance lies — researchers have documented “premature browning,” where beef patties look done well before they reach a safe temperature (Lyon, B.G. et al. 2000, Journal of Food Protection 63:1389–1398). The visual cue people rely on most is the least trustworthy one, while the reliable instrument sits unused.

The education message the researchers drew was blunt: visual cues cannot determine doneness, and the thermometer is the only reliable way to confirm that bacteria have been destroyed. Consumers also need to hear the stakes attached to poultry specifically — Salmonella and Campylobacter from raw or undercooked chicken — because abstract “food safety” doesn’t motivate the way a concrete risk does. And ownership alone clearly isn’t the answer: the survey found non-users among owners too, people who had the tool and still judged the chicken by eye.

What actually moves the needle

If the barrier is habit rather than knowledge, reminders at the moment of cooking should work — and an observational study published in the Journal of Food Protection tested exactly that. Maughan, Godwin, Chambers and Chambers had 155 consumers in Manhattan, Kansas and Nashville, Tennessee each prepare a baked chicken breast and a turkey patty — half following ordinary recipes, half following recipes with food safety instructions built in. With the reminders, 85 percent used a thermometer on the chicken versus about 30 percent of those cooking without instructions, and handwashing rose from roughly half of participants to roughly three-quarters. The thermometer was already in many of those kitchens. It took a line in a recipe to get it into the chicken.

That finding reframes the thermometer gap. It’s not mainly an ownership problem or even a knowledge problem — it’s a prompt problem. Nobody forgets that thermometers exist; they forget to reach for one while the chicken is on the cutting board and dinner is already late. The survey shows the scale of the gap: even among owners, routine items like breasts and patties go unprobed. The recipe study shows the fix is embarrassingly cheap: put the instruction where the cooking happens. A thermometer in the drawer plus a reminder in the recipe beats a thermometer in the drawer alone, every time.

Source: Kosa, K.M. et al. 2017. “Barriers to using a food thermometer when cooking poultry at home: results from a national survey.” Food Protection Trends 37(2):116–125; Maughan, C., Godwin, S., Chambers, D. and Chambers, E. IV. 2016. “Recipe modification improves food safety practices during cooking of poultry.” Journal of Food Protection 79(8):1436–1439. DOI 10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-15-468.