http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/28/dining/28KITC.html

Squeaky Clean? Not Even Close

By AMANDA HESSER

Published: January 28, 2004


WHEN mad cow disease was discovered in Washington State recently, it made
headlines for days and brought action from the federal government. Coupled
with a number of E. coli scares, it caused some Americans to swear off
hamburger.

But most people don't seem to worry about what experts say is a petri dish
for food-borne illness: the home kitchen.

"Everybody is so acutely aware of mad cow disease," said Janet Anderson, a
clinical associate professor of nutrition and food sciences at Utah State
University, "but people aren't aware of the fact that they don't even wash
their hands when they enter their kitchens, which is a much greater risk."

Professor Anderson filmed more than 100 people preparing dinner and found
that only two did not cross-contaminate raw meat with fresh vegetables.

It is not only people's hands, though. Dish towels, sinks, refrigerator door
handles and warm, moist, crevice-filled sponges are also breeding grounds
for bacteria.

"A sponge that's been in use for no more than two or three days in a kitchen
will harbor millions of bacteria," said Elizabeth Scott, co-director of the
Simmons Center for Hygiene and Health in the Home at Simmons College in
Boston. That's a problem, she said, "if you pick up the pathogen or a
pathogenic E. coli, salmonella or campylobacter on the sponge."

She added: "That means that any time you use the sponge to wipe up a surface
you are potentially spreading those pathogens."

These pathogens are a potential problem mainly for infants, the sick elderly
and people with compromised immune systems. But when allowed to multiply on
food, they can make the average person sick.

"The basic reality is that the risks that scare people and the risks that
kill people are very different," said Dr. Peter M. Sandman, a risk
communication consultant in Princeton, N.J. "Risks that you control," Dr.
Sandman said, "are much less a source of outrage than risks that are out of
your control. In the case of mad cow, it feels like it's beyond my control.
I can't tell if my meat has prions in it or not. I can't see it, I can't
smell it. Whereas dirt in my own kitchen is very much in my own control. I
can clean my sponges. I can clean the floor."

Dread is another factor, Dr. Sandman said. People can deal with sick
stomachs, but they absolutely dread the idea of rotting brains.

Fair enough, except that many of the estimated 76 million cases of
food-borne illnesses in the United States each year are contracted in the
home, and many can be prevented.

Dean Cliver, a professor of food safety at the University of California,
Davis, found that microwaving sponges - cellulose ones, not the natural
kind - wipes out harmful bacteria. "We did soak sponges in some pretty bad
things," he said, "and one minute in the nuke and that pretty much did it."

Dishcloths also become saturated with bacteria, although since they dry more
quickly than sponges, bacteria are less likely to breed. They can be
microwaved, too, or simply laundered regularly.

Professor Cliver's other notable discovery involved cutting boards.
"Somewhere along the line, wood got a bad name," Professor Cliver said. Part
of the blame, he said, must go to the rubber industry, which assailed wood
cutting boards in order to promote hard rubber and plastic. In recent years,
it has become conventional wisdom that plastic cutting boards are safer and
easier to clean than wood cutting boards. Even the Food and Drug
Administration says that plastic is less likely to harbor bacteria and
easier to clean.

But in a study Professor Cliver conducted, he found that cellulose in wood
absorbs bacteria but will not release it. "We've never been able to get the
bacteria down in the wood back up on the knife to contaminate food later,"
he said.

Plastic absorbs bacteria in a different way. "When a knife cuts into the
plastic surface, little cracks radiate out from the cut," Professor Cliver
said. The bacteria, he said, "seem to get down in those knife cuts and they
hang out. They go dormant. Drying will kill, say, 90 percent of them, but
the rest could hang around for weeks."

In one test he did, raw chicken juices were spread on samples of used wood
and plastic cutting boards. Both boards were washed in hot soapy water and
dried, then knives were used to simulate cutting vegetables for a salad. No
bacteria appeared on the knives cut on wood, but there were plenty on the
knives used on a plastic board.

Professor Cliver found that running plastic boards through the dishwasher
only spread the bacteria around. The bacteria in the cracks remained. He
said that the water in dishwashers must get hotter than 140 degrees or all
sorts of bacteria can survive.

Wood cutting boards may be microwaved for five minutes, but Professor Cliver
warned that some wood cutting boards contain metal pieces within. He added,
"Some people who tried their boards in the microwave had some spectacular
fireworks."

Even with clean sponges and cutting boards, no one's kitchen will ever be
germ-free because the food supply is not sterile. In 1998, Consumer Reports,
for instance, found that 71 percent of store-bought chicken contained
harmful bacteria. Most bacteria in food can be killed if the food is cooked
properly. But much of the harm happens before the food gets near the oven.

In an experiment performed by Professor Anderson of Utah State University,
she and her colleagues covered a chicken with a product called Glo Germ,
which is invisible in daylight but visible when exposed to ultraviolet
light. The chicken was given to a home cook, who was asked to prepare it. By
the time the chicken was done, Professor Anderson said, the light revealed
chicken juices everywhere - on the counter, in the sink, on cabinet handles,
even on the sippy cup of the cook's 2-year-old child.

Chuck Gerba, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of
Arizona who has studied bacteria in home kitchens, said that he found that
people who had the cleanest-looking kitchens were often the dirtiest.
Because "clean" people wipe up so much, they often end up spreading bacteria
all over the place. The cleanest kitchens, he said, were in the homes of
bachelors, who never wiped up and just put their dirty dishes in the sink.

The biggest obstacle seems to be simply getting people to wash their hands.
Professor Anderson found that only 34 percent of her subjects washed their
hands before cooking, and most failed to use soap. Washing hands in hot
soapy water for at least 20 seconds rinses off surface bacteria and makes it
difficult for bacteria to cling to skin.

The less bacteria that you pick up, the less likely you will fall ill.
Getting people to change their habits, however, is a big mountain to climb.

The truth is, as Dr. Sandman pointed out, bacteria in the home kitchen is
simply not mysterious or weird enough. To respond to it, you have to do
something very banal: wash your hands. And that's just not as compelling as
taking a dramatic stand and halting beef consumption in the face of a
brain-rotting disease.

/

Dishcloths etc.

Science, if that's what it is, is always open to appeals from reality.

I've used the same plastic (Joyce Chen) cutting board on both meat (especially
chicken) and vegetables for 20 years, cleaning it only with hot water and
dishwashing fluid in the sink. I, personally, have had two infectious diseases
severe enough to cause fever in the past 10 years, and the kids, respectively,
have averaged less than one every three years, which is a good deal under the
average. None of us has ever had anything resembling salmonella symptoms, even
though we also have a pet semi-aquatic turtle, whose pump and thermostat also
get cleaned in that self-same sink.

I'm not a neatness freak; just take ordinary, reasonable precautions--but, I
would guess, fewer than the subjects in the controlled studies here cited did.

These warnings that kitchens are dirty places circulate periodically; I
remember hearing about a similar study when I was in high school and another
one about 15 years ago, both making the same mention of chickens (although not
raising the plastic cutting board point). But these warnings never seem to
coordinate with demographic data measuring actual outbreaks.

Neil

WardNA wrote:
Dishcloths etc.


Science, if that's what it is, is always open to appeals from reality.

I've used the same plastic (Joyce Chen) cutting board on both meat (especially
chicken) and vegetables for 20 years, cleaning it only with hot water and
dishwashing fluid in the sink. I, personally, have had two infectious diseases
severe enough to cause fever in the past 10 years, and the kids, respectively,
have averaged less than one every three years, which is a good deal under the
average. None of us has ever had anything resembling salmonella symptoms, even
though we also have a pet semi-aquatic turtle, whose pump and thermostat also
get cleaned in that self-same sink.

I'm not a neatness freak; just take ordinary, reasonable precautions--but, I
would guess, fewer than the subjects in the controlled studies here cited did.

These warnings that kitchens are dirty places circulate periodically; I
remember hearing about a similar study when I was in high school and another
one about 15 years ago, both making the same mention of chickens (although not
raising the plastic cutting board point). But these warnings never seem to
coordinate with demographic data measuring actual outbreaks.

Neil

Science, unless it's a conjecture, uses the scientific method. We are
already superbly advanced in knowing what microorganisms can cause
disease, and pretty much how they do it.

Out of the many dinners that I have been invited to, I have always
observed many practices which I frown upon:

Wiping raw egg from hands with the kitchen towel;

cleaning hands with the towel after just washing with plain tap water;

using utensils on raw meat, and after a simple water wash, using the
same to cut raw veggies going into a non cooked salad;

cleaning sweat from the face of the cook, with the kitchen towel (this
one just disgusts me);

kitchen towels that have been in the sink for days, without being
properly cleaned (in my case I use plain bleach,)

Regarding your statistics with getting sick; I believe them. Only
because our meat now a days is much cleaner, inspection and testing is
more common, and spread is less likely because of these two factors. But
one must err on the side of caution. If you ever suffered from a bad
case of gastroenteritis (which puts some people in a hospital,) you
would take the proper precautions. And I'm not talking about the other
precautions which involve cooking the various meats, at the recommended
temperatures.

An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.

Rich

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dum spiro, spero. (Cicero) As long as I breathe, I hope.

Richard wrote:
Out of the many dinners that I have been
invited to, I have always observed many
practices which I frown upon:
Wiping raw egg from hands with the
kitchen towel;
cleaning hands with the towel after just
washing with plain tap water;
using utensils on raw meat, and after a
simple water wash, using the same to
cut raw veggies going into a non cooked
salad;
cleaning sweat from the face of the cook,
with the kitchen towel (this one just
disgusts me);
kitchen towels that have been in the sink
for days, without being properly cleaned
(in my case I use plain bleach,)

I was invited to a house where they poured the undrank milk from their
childrens back into the carton.

I recoiled because I used that milk in my coffee.

A smelly trash can without a lid was in another friends house near the
food preparation area.

Another disgusting practice is to have a parakeet in the kitchen. Sorry
if I offend you pet owners but animals should be kept outside. The
germs they carry are very dangerous to your health and your children's
well-being.

in article , Not Available at
wrote on 1/29/04 9:50 PM:

Another disgusting practice is to have a parakeet in the kitchen. Sorry
if I offend you pet owners but animals should be kept outside. The
germs they carry are very dangerous to your health and your children's
well-being.


YOU should be kept outside.

Sheryl Rosen wrote:

in article , Not Available at
wrote on 1/29/04 9:50 PM:

Another disgusting practice is to have a parakeet in the kitchen. Sorry
if I offend you pet owners but animals should be kept outside. The
germs they carry are very dangerous to your health and your children's
well-being.


YOU should be kept outside.

(laugh) Like there is a law saying you have to have pets. You don't
like them, don't get them. Especially don't get them and leave them
outside to annoy the neighbors and let them roam. Not to mention pick
up ticks and fleas and god knows what disease. Just don't get pets.

nancy (Moxie the cat stays *inside*)

Sheryl wrote:

YOU should be kept outside.

Gosh! I was only making a polite observation.

our meat now a days is much cleaner, inspection and testing is
more common, and spread is less likely because of these two factors.

But that's not what I'm hearing (except in the case of trichinosis): more than
half of all chickens are supposed to be infested with salmonella.

Neil

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 02:03:01 GMT, Richard Periut
wrote:

WardNA wrote:

These warnings that kitchens are dirty places circulate periodically; I
remember hearing about a similar study when I was in high school and another
one about 15 years ago, both making the same mention of chickens (although not
raising the plastic cutting board point). But these warnings never seem to
coordinate with demographic data measuring actual outbreaks.

Science, unless it's a conjecture, uses the scientific method. We are
already superbly advanced in knowing what microorganisms can cause
disease, and pretty much how they do it.

Out of the many dinners that I have been invited to, I have always
observed many practices which I frown upon:

There *has* to be a balance between normal cleanliness and sterile
perfection. Else none of us would ever touch money without washing it
first. And some do. They are thought to be rather peculiar. :-)
Because we can't live in a microbeless world *doesn't* mean we
shouldn't wash dishes, clean counters, store food properly, and wash
hands frequently.

Contemplation and study of the number of disease organisms in a
kitchen (or bathroom or office or bed or carpet) is *always*
horrifying. Yet outside 'bubble children,' we manage to survive.
Pouring back undrunk milk sounds pretty horrifying to *me*. And false
economy, too. Again, there's a balance between utterly nasty and
statistically unsanitary.

Eg.: I often package chicken breasts into individual freezer bags. And
consider the 'raw chicken' contamination. Can't get the chicken into
the bags without touching the outside surface of bags. I put the
individual bags into a larger, more sturdy plastic wrapping. Same
problem. The big bag goes into the freezer, where it touches other
containers. Even if I religiously wash hands, knives, and cutting
boards after these operations (which I do), a chicken-o-scope would
show many unscoured bits of chicken juice. I'm not going to stop
washing, but I'm also not going to try and sterilize the kitchen every
time I handle food.

From: (Not Available)

Another disgusting practice is to have a parakeet in the kitchen. Sorry
if I offend you pet owners but animals should be kept outside. The
germs they carry are very dangerous to your health and your children's
well-being.

You're right that birds should NEVER be kept in the kitchen, but that's because
it's a danger to the birds,...bringing nonstick pans to high cooking temps
releases chemicals that kill birds, and can make humans ill.
Gail~~~~~~~~~~~~
---
Please remember the needy... http://www.quickdonations.com
~~~ Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity ;o) ~~~

CHUSMA@webtv wrote:


Another disgusting practice is to have a parakeet in the kitchen. Sorry
if I offend you pet owners but animals should be kept outside. The
germs they carry are very dangerous to your health and your children's
well-being.

While I don't believe pets need to be involved in the food preparation
area, they're hardly a routine danger being in the house and have been
found to be beneficial to children (exposure to pets from a young age has
been found to decrease allergy development actually).
Goomba

dienne (Gail) wrote in message ...
You're right that birds should NEVER be kept in the kitchen, but that's because
it's a danger to the birds,...bringing nonstick pans to high cooking temps
releases chemicals that kill birds, and can make humans ill.
Gail~~~~~~~~~~~~

What about a canary in the kitchen to act as a gas detector?

Frogleg wrote:
On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 02:03:01 GMT, Richard Periut
wrote:


WardNA wrote:


These warnings that kitchens are dirty places circulate periodically; I
remember hearing about a similar study when I was in high school and another
one about 15 years ago, both making the same mention of chickens (although not
raising the plastic cutting board point). But these warnings never seem to
coordinate with demographic data measuring actual outbreaks.

Science, unless it's a conjecture, uses the scientific method. We are
already superbly advanced in knowing what microorganisms can cause
disease, and pretty much how they do it.

Out of the many dinners that I have been invited to, I have always
observed many practices which I frown upon:


There *has* to be a balance between normal cleanliness and sterile
perfection. Else none of us would ever touch money without washing it
first. And some do. They are thought to be rather peculiar. :-)
Because we can't live in a microbeless world *doesn't* mean we
shouldn't wash dishes, clean counters, store food properly, and wash
hands frequently.

Contemplation and study of the number of disease organisms in a
kitchen (or bathroom or office or bed or carpet) is *always*
horrifying. Yet outside 'bubble children,' we manage to survive.
Pouring back undrunk milk sounds pretty horrifying to *me*. And false
economy, too. Again, there's a balance between utterly nasty and
statistically unsanitary.

Eg.: I often package chicken breasts into individual freezer bags. And
consider the 'raw chicken' contamination. Can't get the chicken into
the bags without touching the outside surface of bags.

That's where I have my wife or one of my daughters hold the freezer bag
open, while I drop each indivual chicken in the bag, without it touching
the outside. Then, I clean my hands with soap and water, and seal it. So
I don't see why you can't get the chicken into the interior of the bags,
without contaminating its exterior???

Rich




I put the
individual bags into a larger, more sturdy plastic wrapping. Same
problem. The big bag goes into the freezer, where it touches other
containers. Even if I religiously wash hands, knives, and cutting
boards after these operations (which I do), a chicken-o-scope would
show many unscoured bits of chicken juice. I'm not going to stop
washing, but I'm also not going to try and sterilize the kitchen every
time I handle food.



--
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dum spiro, spero. (Cicero) As long as I breathe, I hope.

Frogleg wrote:

Eg.: I often package chicken breasts into individual freezer bags. And
consider the 'raw chicken' contamination. Can't get the chicken into
the bags without touching the outside surface of bags.


Sure you can - just use tongs to handle the fowl...zip the bags shut...then
spray all "affected" areas. e.g. the outside of the bags, etc. with hydrogen
peroxide....


I put the
individual bags into a larger, more sturdy plastic wrapping. Same
problem. The big bag goes into the freezer, where it touches other
containers. Even if I religiously wash hands, knives, and cutting
boards after these operations (which I do), a chicken-o-scope would
show many unscoured bits of chicken juice. I'm not going to stop
washing, but I'm also not going to try and sterilize the kitchen every
time I handle food.


No. Just follow my advice as per above: I have a quart bottle of hydrogen
peroxide with a sprayer attachment...just spray where needed....easy!

--
Best
Greg

"Gregory Morrow" wrote in
message ink.net...

Frogleg wrote:

Eg.: I often package chicken breasts into individual freezer bags. And
consider the 'raw chicken' contamination. Can't get the chicken into
the bags without touching the outside surface of bags.


Sure you can - just use tongs to handle the fowl...zip the bags
shut...then
spray all "affected" areas. e.g. the outside of the bags, etc. with
hydrogen
peroxide....


I put the
individual bags into a larger, more sturdy plastic wrapping. Same
problem. The big bag goes into the freezer, where it touches other
containers. Even if I religiously wash hands, knives, and cutting
boards after these operations (which I do), a chicken-o-scope would
show many unscoured bits of chicken juice. I'm not going to stop
washing, but I'm also not going to try and sterilize the kitchen every
time I handle food.


No. Just follow my advice as per above: I have a quart bottle of
hydrogen
peroxide with a sprayer attachment...just spray where needed....easy!

--
Best
Greg



Of course you know you're coddling your immune system so when you really
need it, it's gonna require peroxide.

People, we didn't get sick from our kitchens; it's what we brought into our
kitchens that made us sick.

Jack Antibiotics