Restaurant-food safety and you

[SuzySushi]

A study of fast-food restaurants reported in the April issue of the Journal of Food Protection revealed coliform bacteria on more foods handled with gloved hands than bare hands. Source: FoodProcessing.com

[SKinCA]

Oh I LOVE you for posting this. The glove thing makes me crazy because I know that people aren't changing them out. Thank you!

[rooftop1000]

I love you too because it is soooo gross to work in gloves and watch people around you touch everything in sight because Ya know...

their hands arent getting dirty right

I voluntarily use them for raw meat and bathroom cleaning..usually not the same pair

tracey

[nwyles]

There is a blinding flash of the obvious. Unless the gloves are changed after each task, they are just as dirty as the UNWASHED hands. We have used them and I found that it gave the kitchen worker a false sense of cleanliness. Nothing replaces good old constant hand washing with an antibacterial soap and warm water.

[Pan]

I'm by no means convinced antibacterial soap is a good idea, though. Might the routine use of antibacterial agents tend to promote the growth and spread of multiple-resistant bacteria, as with the overuse of antibiotics?

[PPX]

Thanks for posting the article. I've often wondered about the point of my local deli workers wearing gloves when I've seen them work the cash register & handle money & then go right to food prep! ick!

[chromedome]

Uhhhh....yeah. Duh. One of my hot buttons, and I've vented here before about gloves once or twice.

They're only cleaner than my hand when I take 'em out of the box. And that's assuming that some half-trained part-timer hasn't spilled half the box onto the floor, and put them all back in (I've caught that one happening a couple of times at different places). After that, they're *exactly* as clean as my hand, and for the same reason: that I've got the training and attitude to work in a clean and hygienic fashion.

We've all been in chains where they issue one pair per staffer per shift...don't kid yourself.

[jsolomon]

I'm by no means convinced antibacterial soap is a good idea, though. Might the routine use of antibacterial agents tend to promote the growth and spread of multiple-resistant bacteria, as with the overuse of antibiotics?

←

Actually, it doesn't quite work that way. The mechanism by which antibacterial soap is antibacterial is much different than the mechanism by which antibiotics work, so it is very difficult to gain resistance.

The funny thing is, the antibacterial chemicals added to soap, unless it's something like chlorhexidine gluconate (like surgeons scrub with), really don't do much better than soap and water alone. But, make sure you're using adequate soap, and scrubbing the whole surface of the hand.

[Country Cook]

I hope this means a return to proper hand washing stations and no more gloves. Maybe the disposable glove fad will be over.

[Toliver]

This has been discussed at length in another eG discussion which I can't seem to locate at the moment.

The problem isn't the gloves. The problem is with the workers not using the gloves properly. Whether this if from lack of proper food handling training or whether these people are mentally just a taco short of a combination platter, I don't know.

As was mentioned in the other discussion, if you are being served by someone who is wearing disposable gloves and they're not disposing of them when they should be (like when they go to serve you) speak up. The stomach you save may be your own.

[andiesenji]

I hope this means a return to proper hand washing stations and no more gloves.  Maybe the disposable glove fad will be over.

←

Actually the initial movement for wearing gloves in food handling was not because of sanitation but because of cross contamination of foodstuffs causing severe allergic reactions.

It began here in California (the most litigious state) when a woman had a severe allergic reaction to residue from peanuts that had been transferred to her foods by the person who had handled peanuts and then handled her food.

Following that successful litigation. Certain members of the state legislature picked up on it and expanded it to cover all food handling.

The rule is that gloves must be changed between handling different foods.

Washing with soap and water as usually done and with antibacterial aids will not always remove all of the particles that can cause allergic reactions.

"Normal" hand washing does not guarantee germ-free hands.

Many tests have been done on surgeons after lengthy scrubbing with a brush - samples taken from under nails and from crevices in the skin, then cultured still show bacteria growth.

Employees are supposed to change gloves between handling each customer's order or after handling any meat or poultry products.

The SubWay restaurant across the street from my office was cited when one of the doctors noticed an employee made up sandwiches for several customers without changing gloves (the cheapie plastic baggie type) and filed a complaint. The health department sent out an agent who observed the same thing and the place was cited.

I wear gloves at home for handling certain things because of convenience as well as food safety.

If I am handling something sticky and the phone rings I can rip off the glove and answer the phone.

I still wash my hands constantly but I am not transferring things that should not be. I go through a lot of gloves but I feel it is worth it.

[jsolomon]

Oh, I certainly agree with you. There are differences between "clean" "antiseptic" "disinfected" and "sterile". And, bacteria and fungi have been around much longer than we and have many many tricks up their sleeves to survive quite harsh environments. However, handwashing will get rid of the vast majority of vegetative (actively living, eating, and growing) microbes on your skin. All bets are off when you ask about spores and the like.

Also, keep in mind the culturing process will turn most spores into vegetative cells...

[Pan]

[...]"Normal" hand washing does not guarantee germ-free hands. 

Many tests have been done on surgeons after lengthy scrubbing with a brush - samples taken from under nails and from crevices in the skin, then cultured still show bacteria growth.[...]

←

Of course! If you want to sterilize your hands, you have to use alcohol. But I don't think anyone expects their food to be sterile. Bacteria are flying through the air all the time. My brother found that even doubly-distilled water contained bacteria within two days, which is a problem because it was supposed to be sterile for lab work.

[jsolomon]

Actually, that would be "disinfecting". Sterilization is a higher level of bacterial death which alcohol does not attain.

[chow guy]

There is a blinding flash of the obvious. Unless the gloves are changed after each task, they are just as dirty as the UNWASHED hands. We have used them and I found that it gave the kitchen worker a false sense of cleanliness. Nothing replaces good old constant hand washing with an antibacterial soap and warm water.

←

Amen!

I've never understood why more people don't get it? It seems so obvious.

[...tm...]

Actually, that would be "disinfecting". Sterilization is a higher level of bacterial death which alcohol does not attain.

Yes, to sterilize your hands you should hold them in pressurized steam for at least 20 minutes. Luckily, most bacteria and other food pathogens have a fairly high infectvie dose, meaning that the few that still hang on after regular hand-washing won't be enough to infect you.

But seriously, I have seen so many employees wear gloves while using the cash register and handling money, then wear the same glovesb back into the kitchen. I, being a wimp, never say anything, although I do passive-aggressively make a disgusted, questioning face. They probably think I'm just constipated or something.

[Eden]

I'm by no means convinced antibacterial soap is a good idea, though. Might the routine use of antibacterial agents tend to promote the growth and spread of multiple-resistant bacteria, as with the overuse of antibiotics?

←

I asked a friend who's an "industrial hygenist" about this. here's a bit of her reply:

Based on some information I recently saw from CDC, they are not the way to go.

Incidence of disease in households that use antibacterial soaps is not

(statistically) significantly lower that that in households that do not.

I can't find the very helpful article I remember, but I have below snippets

of another one, by Stuart B. Levy of Tufts University School of Medicine,

from the CDC website.

"Whereas antibiotics are designed to treat bacterial (not viral) infections,

antibacterial products protect vulnerable patients from infectious

disease-causing organisms. Neither are demonstrably useful in the healthy

household.

...

Through mutation, some of [bacteria] emerge with resistance to the

antibacterial agent aimed at it, and possibly to other antimicrobial agents

as well.

...

[Also,] reports are mounting about a possible association between infections

in early childhood and decreased incidence of allergies."

[johnder]

Given the massive nationwide media coverage of the recent rodent problem in a specific NYC chain restaurant [CNN], and what appears to be a subsequent crackdown by the New York City Department of Health [New York Sun], the New York Times ran an great op-ed piece by eGullet's Steven Shaw here talking about food safety issues.

Quote

Take a Rat to Dinner

It’s difficult not to react viscerally to the images — repeatedly shown on television, in newspapers and on YouTube — of rats scurrying about the KFC/Taco Bell restaurant in New York City’s Greenwich Village at night, like villains in a twisted children’s book. Throughout history, after all, rats have been associated with plague and pestilence. From works of literature like Dostoyevsky’s “Notes From Underground” to psychoanalytic texts like Freud’s case study “The Rat Man,” the symbolism of rats is uniformly negative. In metaphor, to smell a rat is to sense that something is amiss, and a snitch is called simply a rat. Rats have few fans.

...

Quote

Rats in restaurants, while distasteful, are more a distraction than a disaster for public health. As reported in this newspaper, flies — each one a potential airborne disease carrier — are a more dire threat. So are cows, sheep and pigs, whose excrement can contaminate food at its source with E. coli, as was recently believed to be the case with California spinach and with vegetables served at Taco Bell. And to echo the punch line of many a nature documentary, the greatest threat to restaurant sanitation is man: salmonella, for example, is typically initiated or spread through improper hand-washing, food handling or cooking.

Restaurants, moreover, are not the primary source of the food we eat. Most meals, even in the dining-obsessed culture of New York City, are taken in the home. We tend to think of our own kitchens as clean, but research published in 2004 by Janet Anderson of Utah State University paints a different picture.

Professor Anderson filmed 100 people preparing a meat entree and a salad at home. The subjects were told they were being observed for chicken and meatloaf recipes, but the study was actually about food safety. Of the 100 cooks, fewer than 50 washed their hands before preparing food; 30 failed to clean their cutting boards; 82 undercooked the chicken; 46 undercooked the meatloaf; and 24 didn’t store raw meat on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator (to keep any leaking juices from dripping onto other food).

An earlier study, by Audits International of Highland Park, Ill., evaluated 106 home kitchens in 81 cities in the United States and Canada. It found that 99 percent violated at least one critical food safety standard. Yet home kitchens are not subject to health inspections.

The last paragraph led me to look at my own practices in the kitchen. Given I have worked in a few restaurants, I would like to think that my food safety is pretty good: I always wash my hands before cooking and frequently while cooking and have dedicated plastic cutting boards for poultry and fish, although I use wood for everything else.

I came across a quiz the FDA put out called Can your kitchen pass the food safety test?

The problem is while I knew the correct answers to almost all of them (except question 3), I scored only 20 points, mainly because although I know there is a risk, I feel comfortable taking that risk, specifically in the case of the two questions below:

Quote

5. The last time we had hamburgers in my home, I ate mine:

a. rare (140 F)

b. medium (160 F)

c. well-done (170 F)

I personally love rare burgers, but unless I am comfortable with the place I am eating them, I will only get it Medium Rare. When I am cooking burgers at home, I grind my own meat, so I am much more at ease eating it very rare. So I answered A.

The other one:

Quote

6. The last time there was cookie dough in my home, the dough was:

a. made with raw eggs, and I sampled some of it

b. made with raw eggs and refrigerated, then I sampled some of it

c. store-bought, and I sampled some of it

d. not sampled until baked

Obviously they are concerned about Salmonella Enteritidis, but given I know where my eggs come from, and the large amount of both whites and yolks I consume yearly in cocktails, I don't consider this a problem, I answered B, mainly because I love chocolate chip cookie dough.

The most interesting question of the bunch was:

Quote

3. The last time the kitchen sink drain, disposal and connecting pipe in my home were sanitized was:

a. last night

b. several weeks ago

c. can't remember

Check out the test page for the answer and how to do this. Does anyone actually do this?

I think if nothing else the recent coverage food safety has been getting hopefully will increase the publics awareness of safety in their own kitchens and hopefully the DOH will focus more on food safety issues in restaurants that really matter, as opposed to forcing people to wear rubber gloves.

[chefpeon]

In regard to keeping your drain and disposal sanitized:

Check out the test page for the answer and how to do this. Does anyone actually do this?

According to John Guzewich, CFSAN's director of emergency coordination and response, the kitchen sink drain, disposal and connecting pipe are often overlooked, but they should be sanitized periodically by pouring down the sink a solution of 1 teaspoon (5 milliliters) of chlorine bleach in 1 quart (about 1 liter) of water or a solution of commercial kitchen cleaning agent made according to product directions. Food particles get trapped in the drain and disposal and, along with the moistness, create an ideal environment for bacterial growth.

Actually, I do it a lot because there's nothing worse than a smelly kitchen drain and food particles in the disposal rotting away to accost my senses. I didn't have any idea though that bacteria in the drain affected bacterial growth on my food items, since none of my food ever comes in contact, or even close the kitchen drain. At work, when we are inspected by the county health people, the issues of sanitizing the drains there are never even brought up, but maybe that's because I pour bleach solution down the drain every single day......

I would agree with that article.....that the number one enemy regarding our health and proper food safety is ourselves. Most occurrences of sicknesses involving restaurant food can be traced back to improper human sanitation issues. Hand washing, and the CORRECT techniques involved, are number one. It's one thing to get someone to wash their hands, but quite another to witness them doing it RIGHT. A quick rinse under the hot water, just ain't gonna do it, and that's what I see.....A LOT.

I'll bet you that almost any other pro here has some sort of rodent story to tell. I have several.

When I read the story about the rats in NYC, it didn't really shock me much. You work in the food biz and eventually you have to deal with pests (I mean besides the customers ). But believe me, when it comes to food safety issues, rats really are the least of your worries.

[Chris Amirault]

The silence in response to this topic is pretty interesting!

I scored an 18 for precisely the same reasons that John scored a 20: I eat hamburgers rare, love raw dough, and haven't sanitized a drain in my life. However, I have watched friends cook and cringed as they used the same cutting board for meat and vegetables, or didn't wash their hands repeatedly during prep. I've been using gloves a lot for my right hand when breaking down meats (I'm a lefty and hold the knife with that hand), which is useful for a few different reasons.

[highchef]

I wash my sinks with lysol every morning and again at night after clean up. I rinse with hot water (heater is on high, I like hot water HOT).

I think that's plenty clean, huh?

I'm not big on using one cutting board for fish, one for meat, one for chicken, etc...but I do just use one board for what I'm cutting, then throw it in the dishwasher and if I need another one I get it out. each board goes into the dishwasher after use. The washer is set for heat dry as well.

I know I'm pretty strict onl hand washing in my kitchen. Even the neighborhood kids won't touch food without washing their hands first cause they know I'll ream em. (ever have a kid come in from playing football and stick their hands in a big, newly opened bag of chips?)