Plastic Gloves
A cook wearing plastic gloves while preparing food may make you feel confident in cleanliness. But some experts think the opposite is true. “Plastic gloves are more dangerous than bare hands,” says Howard Cannon, CEO of Restaurant Expert Witness and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Restaurant.
The gloves can give cooks a false sense of security, and they may not change them as regularly as they should. If a cook wore gloves while handling raw meat, and then touched your salad, bacteria can easily contaminate your greens. Same with tasks like making change from the cash register, or taking out the garbage.
You might be surprised to learn what the dirtiest thing on a restaurant table is.
Salt and Pepper Shakers
When studying the dirtiest items on a restaurant table, an Good Morning America investigation worked with researchers at the University of Arizona to test items on restaurant tables in Arizona, New York and Ohio. The results? An average bacteria count of 11,600 on the salt and pepper shakers, making them one of the dirtiest items on the table. The study found E. coli on top of pepper shakers. We suggest skipping the seasoning! Next up: Find out if you’re guilty of any of these mistakes diners make when trying to be polite.
Menus
The same study counted a staggering 185,000 bacteria on restaurant menus, by far the dirtiest thing on the table. Dr. Chuck Gerba of the University of Arizona told ABC, “You probably have about 100 times more bacteria on that menu than you do a typical toilet seat in the restroom.”
When you think about how many people handle the menu, plus how infrequently menus are cleaned, this may not be so surprising. To stay safe, wash your hands after you place your order, and don’t let kids chew on the menu. It’s just one of the things that your waiter secretly dislikes.
Glassware and Silverware
Busboys handle glasses and silverware out of the dishwasher, and they may touch the prongs of your fork or the inside of your glass…in the midst of rinsing dirty dishes. Think how often your waitress lifts your water glass by the rim. She just transferred bacteria from her hands, which regularly touch cash, credit cards, chairs, coats and doorknobs.
Suddenly wanting to stay in? Try these restaurant copycat recipes you can make at home.
Ice Machine
According to a study of 10 fast food franchises by the Daily Mail in the UK, 60% of ice tested contained more bacteria than toilet water. The inside of the ice machine is rarely cleaned, and can harbor black mold and other nasty things.
Salad Tongs and Buffet Servers
Heading to the buffet or salad bar? Watch how you handle the servers. These are rarely changed out during a dinner service, which means they’re touched by many, many hands. Definitely wash your hands after handling them, and you may want to steer entirely during cold and flu season.
Rags and Sponges
Have you ever watched a worker swipe off your table with a filthy rag? That may clear away food debris, but it’s not removing bacteria. In fact, rags often contain harmful bacteria. Workers may use the same rag to wipe tables throughout a shift, or use the same rag to wipe serving stations and tables.
Chairs
In a 20/20 investigation, 70% of restaurant chairs were found to have E. coli bacteria. Given how many people sit in them, how often a busboy or host may pull them out for you and how infrequently they’re cleaned, chairs are definitely dirty.
Snack Bowls
It’s hard to resist a basket of tortilla chips at a Mexican restaurant, or a bowl of nuts at the bar. Unfortunately, they’re far from sanitary. Restaurants may pour the snacks from large bags at the start of the night, and return uneaten food to the same bin at the end of the day. The baskets may also move from table to table between customers, so you’re basically sharing snacks with everyone else at the restaurant.
Hands
“Personal sanitation” is in the top five restaurant health code violations. When cooks are in the thick of a dinner rush, it’s tempting to give hands a quick rinse and move on. But the recommended hand-washing protocol is quite rigorous: scrub with anti-bacterial soap for 20 seconds, scrubbing up to the elbows. This is long enough to sing the “Happy Birthday” song twice!
The post 10 Things Restaurants Aren’t Cleaning Like They Should appeared first on Taste of Home.
Kelsey Rae Dimberg