What a review is
A review means taking the factual claims on a page or in a question and checking them against the current primary source, then either correcting what has drifted or confirming it still holds.
It is not proofreading. Spelling and formatting get fixed whenever anyone notices them, and that is not a review and does not move a review date. The thing being checked is whether the content is still true.
Reviews check against the source, not against the previous version. Comparing a page to what it said last time only tells you whether it changed. Comparing it to the source tells you whether it is right, which is a different and more useful question.
How often each kind of content is reviewed
Not everything drifts at the same speed, so not everything is on the same clock. These are minimums, and content is often looked at sooner.
| Content | Reviewed at least | Why that interval |
|---|---|---|
| Exam facts Question counts, pass marks, timing, format | Every 6 months | Changes on the official side without notice, and it is the most damaging category to get wrong. A stale pass mark sends someone into an exam expecting the wrong thing. |
| Practice questions and explanations | On every edition change | Each question records the standard it was written against, so an edition change identifies exactly which items need rechecking rather than requiring a sweep of the whole bank. |
| Study guides and written explanations | Every 12 months | Built on the same standards as the questions, but longer-form and slower to go stale in ways that matter to a mark. |
| Editorial policy pages Including this one | Every 12 months | A policy page describing a process nobody follows any more is worse than not having one. These are also reviewed whenever the process itself changes. |
| Outbound links | With the page holding them | Official pages get reorganised often. A link to a health department that now leads nowhere undermines the claim it was supporting. |
What moves something to the front of the queue
The schedule is a floor, not the main mechanism. Most reviews that matter happen because something specific prompted them.
- A new edition of a course book. Every question tagged to the outgoing edition is pulled and rechecked before the tests holding them go back into circulation.
- A new Food Code, or a supplement between editions. Supplements are easy to miss precisely because they are not full editions, so they are treated as a trigger in their own right.
- A state or county changing its own rules. Affects the tracks and explanations where jurisdiction matters, particularly Food Handler.
- A correction report from a reader. The fastest trigger there is. A report naming a test and question number can be resolved the same day.
- A question behaving oddly. An item almost everyone gets wrong, or almost everyone gets right, is usually telling us something about the question rather than about the people answering it. Both are worth a look.
- An official announcement. When a standards body announces a change that has not landed yet, the affected pages are reviewed then, and again when it actually publishes.
A review can end in no change
Most do, and that is the system working rather than time wasted.
If the check confirms the content still holds, the review date is updated and nothing else moves. The date is a record that someone looked, which is information whether or not anything needed fixing.
The alternative is worse. If a review only counts when something changes, there is quiet pressure to find something to change, and pages get reworded on their way to being no better than they were. Confirming accuracy is a legitimate outcome and we record it as one.
What the review date means
Where a page carries a review date, it means the factual claims on it were checked against current sources on that date by our editorial team.
It does not mean the page was rewritten then, and it does not mean every sentence was retyped. It means someone went back to the source and confirmed the page still matched it.
We do not date-wash. Bumping a review date without doing the review is a common trick, because a recent date makes a page look maintained to both readers and search engines. It is also a lie about the one thing the date exists to tell you. If a date on this site moved, the checking happened.
Who reviews
Our editorial team. Reviews are carried out against the primary source material for the certification concerned, following the hierarchy set out in our sources and references policy.
Where a question is corrected as a result, it goes back through the same approval step as a new question. A revised question is not treated as already-approved just because an earlier version of it was.
Readers are part of the cycle
A scheduled review catches drift. It is much less good at catching a question that was wrong the day it was written, because the person reviewing it is often the person who wrote it and will read it the same way twice.
Reader reports catch those, and they are the reason a fair proportion of what gets corrected here gets corrected. If something looks wrong to you, the correction form takes a minute and goes ahead of anything sitting on a schedule.
What happens to a report after that is set out in our corrections policy.
The limits of this
Said plainly, because a policy that claims everything is always current is not describing anything real.
- Between reviews, content can be out of date. A standard that changes the day after a review will not be reflected until the trigger is noticed or the next review comes round. The date on the page is what tells you how much of a gap you are looking at.
- Local rules are the hardest to keep current. There are thousands of jurisdictions and they do not announce changes to us. Where a requirement is local, check with your own health department rather than relying on any prep site, including this one.
- A review confirms accuracy against a source, not exam outcomes. Current content still does not predict how you will do. That is covered on our disclaimer page.