Morningstar/veggie burgers food safety?

[lemonchar]

I just made some veggie "riblets" by Morningstar, and as far as I can tell they're vegan and free of any egg products. But the packaging & Morningstar's website still say I need to cook them to an internal temperature of 165 degrees for food safety.

Which would be fine, except I don't have a microwave and accidentally undercooked them in my oven. They were room-temperature and pretty tasty, but I was so hungry I'd already eaten most of it when I remembered the cooking instructions.

Why would they advise 165 degrees (the minimum safe temp for meat) for veggie products? Has anyone gotten sick from undercooked Morningstar or Boca dishes?

Help!

[olschesky]

i've been eating morninstar burgers daily for over 2 years.........i''m not sure why the box says that and i hadn't even read the box till 5 months ago so never paid attention to the temperature of my burger......i still don't they've never made me sick and ive eaten a ton of them.........my fav is the asian veggie burger...has lots of ginger in it

you will be fine

[Andrilla]

It sounds to me like they are covering their butt. If someone should happen to get sick off if it, the company can claim that the person did not cook the food properly and it is not their fault, sort of like how restaurants have that note on menus that ordering under cooked food can lead to food poisoning so that if someone gets sick off of a rare steak it is not the restaurant's fault.

Being careful to heat it to that temp is like when you look both ways when you cross a one-way road. There is almost NO chance that there is a car speeding towards you the wrong direction. If you don't check for cars coming the wrong way. you'll still be fine 99.99% of the time, but checking does give peace of mind more than anything else. I'm not saying that you should go around ignoring all the cooking directions, (or that you should only look one way when crossing one way roads, for that matter) but the likelihood of something bad happening because of it is very slim.