At the screening machines for cabin baggage, the TSA struggles to identify some molded explosives and bombs/bomb components when the explosives are disguised as food items (or even simply placed amongst food items of some sorts). By having the food items out separately for sceeening and being able to more easily make sure that there are no wires/metal connections to that which may appear to be food, the chances of the TSA missing a bomb may drop. The corollary to this dynamic is as follows: as the TSA knew it has this problem, food in bags with electronic cables and a motley of other stuff already had the potential of slowing down the baggage screening process and distracting/conditioning the image-reviewing TSA screeners in one or more adverse way.

In other words, this food removal from cluttered cabin bags practice was designed to make up for the TSA’s struggles with being effective on the hunt for explosives and bombs. Could the TSA ETD way more cabins bags instead? Yes.

After all that the TSA does with food, I must say a competent shoe bomb maker and shoe bomb user could still have a relatively easy time of getting explosives smuggled airside for use as a bomb even with these food-out demands: PreCheck passenger with shoe soles or heel filled with some kind of explosives clears the WTMD, while the detonator/fuse is in the screen bag and left detached until on board the plane. Now let’s just wait and see when TSA asks for shoes to be removed from cabin bags and again returns to all shoes off.