I haven't watched the full video, but you could also argue the meme has brought the webcomic to a much wider audience. Other popular webcomics of that era have simply vanished.
Food is a lot safer than we think. You have to mess up pretty bad to get really sick from something. It's the small minority of cases where something like e. Coli, or salmonella is present and given the opportunity to flourish that things get really bad. The truly terrifying one is botulism, and it's toxin can't be denatured by heat.