We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in a restaurant and you look down at the plate of food in front of you and see something that’s just nasty.

Maybe it’s someone’s hair baked into your food or perhaps a fingernail on the plate. As stomach turning as those moments may be, those are actually relatively harmless — at least to our health.

It’s the invisible dangers that are the biggest concerns in restaurants.

From improperly stored and cooked food to a dirty kitchen, some of the real dangers lurk out of sight of most restaurant patrons.

Fortunately, state governments provide at least a rudimentary system of health inspections and public health ratings for consumers.

Unfortunately, neither of the two systems used in Mississippi or Louisiana is ideal.

In Mississippi, restaurants are given a letter grade, which restaurants are required to conspicuously post. The problem is without digging around a bit, it’s difficult for consumers to know exactly what the grades mean.

Louisiana’s system is more explanatory in some ways, but again sort of lacks the easy description of why consumers should care and how they should gauge whether or not to patronize an establishment.

In a perfect world, we’d all see a sign on the front door of our favorite restaurant with a picture of our mother with either the words, “Yes, it’s clean,” or the words, “Don’t think about it, it’s nasty.”

But since that’s not going to happen, the best rule of thumb is for restaurant goers to investigate the ratings themselves — before they go out to eat — and become informed diners.