HuffPo: Bacteria Linked To Feces Found In Nearly Half Of Fast Food Soda Fountains

[Bleacher Creature]

Bacteria Linked To Feces Found In Nearly Half Of Fast Food Soda Fountains

Didn't think the fast food industry could get any grosser? Well it can.

This time, it's not the food, but the soda fountains to be worried about. According to Tom Laskawy, a media and technology professional and blogger for grist.org, a team of microbiologists from Hollins University found that between 48% of sodas tested from the fast food fountains contain coliform bacteria, which is typically fecal in origin. And most bacteria found were antibiotic resistant, as icing on the cake.

The microbiologists published their findings in the International Journal of Food Microbiology. They tested 90 beverages from 30 soda fountains.

<SNIP>

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/06/fecal-bacteria-found-in-n_n_413733.html

[DesertFlower]

1. i've never had a soft drink

from one of those places.

[undeterred]

2. Another good reason to make 2010 the year to stop drinking soda.

[LostInAnomie]

3. Meh...

Everything you touch in the bathroom in your house has fecal material on it, even your toothbrush. Tap water has microscopic bits of toilet paper in it. The world is filled with disgusting things.

[Big Blue Marble]

8. Yes but it is yours and your family's fecal material.

Your body is used to it. Not at all true in the outside world with the germs of others'.

[LostInAnomie]

26. I doubt your body makes the differentiation between a stranger's poop...

... and your Granny's.

[pipi_k]

9. But at least it's fecal matter

from people I know.

I don't wanna swallow some stranger's fecal matter.



On edit...two of us with the same thought

[SpiralHawk]

4. "Soda, soda, soda. And what will you have, Stanley?" - Laurel

[musette_sf]

5. Slime In The Ice Machine!

[Purveyor]

10. The legacy of Marvin Zindler lives on. Thanks for posting. eom

[musette_sf]

18. The Marvin Zindler Art Car:

[Richard D]

6. Gives the term . . .

"shit eating grin" a whole new definition when applied to a happy meal.

[SoCalDem]

7. If you're happy & you know it...drink your shit

:rofl:

[meow2u3]

15. Liquid e-coli poisoning

The insult is no longer "eat shit and die"--it's "Drink shit and die!"

[flyarm]

11. yummmm...that is another reason for me to never drink soda out!! eom

[Warpy]

12. Wipe those cans

Friction from your sleeve or shirt tail will dislodge most of the bacteria off the slick metal and onto the fabric.

Since you'll be able to wash the fabric long before you're reduced to eating it, it's all good.

It's best to assume everything is contaminated and act appropriately. Wipe cans and cook meat.

[Selatius]

13. This is EASY to figure out why. Quite a few people don't wash hands after using the restroom.

The problem is prevalent enough that employers post signs up in their restrooms saying "All employees must wash hands before returning to station" or some iteration thereof.

[pipi_k]

16. I'll tell you what I find disgusting and discouraging...

It's when the restrooms those employees are supposed to be washing their hands in don't have any soap.

Yeah...a quick sprinkle under the water...that'll do the trick...


And even when there's all the soap and water and paper towels anyone could ever want, how many times has anyone seen someone else use them, dry their hands, and then touch the filthy dirty doorknob or lever that's been touched by someone before them who had urine or feces on their hands and didn't bother washing them...


I use a paper towel to turn off the faucet and then use another to open the door (after I've first dried my hands on a clean paper towel).


Oh, and something else pretty disgusting which I never thought of...


Someone I knew said that he saw a mom sit her toddler (in a diaper) up on the counter where you order stuff. Not that it's any less disgusting than touching it anyway after others have run their own hands along it.

yech.

I think maybe I have a worse case of OCD than "Monk"

[DainBramaged]

33. My thought exactly.........

Where I work we don't handle food but insist the employees wash their hands because they come in contact with the public (shaking hands, handing over parts or brochures, etc) yet time and again an employee will run into the bathrooms and come right out without washing their hands. I have Purel at my desk and make it a habit to use it whenever I come in contact with our employees.

[JoeyT]

14. I don't doubt it.

Though it's kind of pointless to object to the feces in the drink fountain when there's feces in the hamburger. Sometimes both cow and human. If we cared about not eating shit, we wouldn't be eating fast food in the first place.

Edited to add: By the way, fecal contamination can do a lot more damage than food poisoning if you have a compromised immune system. VRE (Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus) is scary. The only antibiotic that really kills it down is linezolid, which rings up at an insane $1500 a course plus it's toxic to your mitochondria.

[Maru Kitteh]

24. You're right, seems pointless to worry about a little coliform in the soda when the burger is full

of actual poop - and ALL restaurant (and grocery store) burgers have poop in them.

[mzmolly]

17. That's beyond

disgusting. I'm glad I don't drink soda.

[kestrel91316]

19. I just had one today. Might be my last. Because I have ONE QUESTION:

What kind of FILTHY employees and practices result in this??

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

20. The kind of employees

who've had any sense of dignity crushed by rotten bosses, and who work for slave wages.

Any surprise they don't give a shit? Er, they do give a shit, but not how we'd like them to give a shit?

:hi:

[TexasObserver]

21. I never drink sodas from such fountains. They're germ factories.

Give me a can, straight from the cola company.

[anarch]

22. well, to be fair

most popular soft drinks aren't much healthier for you than shit in the first place.

[TheMadMonk]

23. The simple truth is that it's everywhere. Always has been. Always will be.

Anywhere not maintained to cleanroom standards will have its share. It comes from nicked guts in the abitoir; Itchy arseholes; doorknobs; seats; countertops that have kids sat on them; the sandpit kitty shat in and the dirt they eat; doggy doo on your shoes and in the carpet your rug rat crawls on; handrails/straps on busses and trains; elevator buttons; crosswalk buttons; etc. It's fucking everywhere.

The nasty versions come from jumping up and down and screaming till your kid gets prescribed antibiotics for a snotty nose; and from you using the leftovers for yours. They come from useless domestic wipes "guaranteed" to kill 99.9% of all household germs. Where you must disinfect, chlorine containing bleaches and nappy/diaper sanitisers are far more effective and a fraction of the price.

Healthy kids eat dirt. All too often the sickly ones come from a sanitised environment.

You want to be safe, eat your "shit" and take solace in the idea that constant low grade exposure to the more benign varieties of these pathogens will confer upon you a certain degree of protection from the nasty ones that the modern obsession with cleanliness has given us.

[Kali]

25. what can I say, but the stupid "+1000000000000000000"?

agree completely

[fizzgig]

27. well said

and don't forget all the antibiotics in meat and the water supplies.

unless you have a compromised immune system, i don't get the overwhelming hysteria over germs/bacteria. i practice good hygiene, but i don't own any hand sanitizer, sanitizer wipes or any similar products. hell, i avoid antibiotics whenever possible and have only taken them twice in the last five years.

i wonder how many people know that they're compromising their own immunity with their over-sanitization.

[TreasonousBastard]

28. Why are these people always picking on fast food? It just gets..

the food snobs all worked up so they can brag again how superior they are to the rest of us lowlife plebians who find one reason or another to get a Big Mac. (I'm partial to the mushroom swiss Angus, myself.)

Why don't these "researchers" find a grant that lets them into multi-starred restaurants and see what's there? Or into YOUR kitchen to see how clean the food there is?

When I was in the restaurant systems business I was in everything from Burger Kings to IHOPS to local mom&pops. And a few highly regarded and well-reviewed restaurants.

The chains were the cleanest and generally had the best ingredients. They were designed and built to be easily cleaned and the chains had standards that had to be met or your franchise could be yanked. They also had the buying power to get better ingredients at the same or lower cost than the independants could get crap for.

Those independents-- some were OK, but most just paid off the county health inspectors. I was in kitchens that made me wretch from the stench and saw printers clogged with roaches. Ingredients? Whose unmarked van just pulled up to the back?

Do you really think that Indian or Mexican restaurant everyone raves about is as clean as an operating room?

Fecal bacteria are EVERYWHERE in tiny amounts because they're everywhere and people are slobs. Get used to them build an immunity. Years ago I was in St. Maarten and met a Dutchman who travelled the world as an aviation expert. He said he ate and drank whatever was local, shit for a week, and spent the rest of the time with no problems.

Besides, how many times do YOU wash your hands after picking your nose or scratching your ass and before touching a plate in the buffet?

[Quantess]

29. You lost me at your last paragraph.

I wash my hands a lot. I'm pretty sure a large percentage of people consistently wash their hands after "scratching their ass". The people who don't are the ones spreading their fecal bacteria! It's always a few people who ruin things for everybody else.

[pissedoff01]

30. Shit.

[Harry Monroe]

31. And who, I wonder, is taking a shit in the soda syrup?

[jobycom]

32. Y'all do realize that the study is NOT saying that people are pooping in your cokes, right?

The amounts they are talking about are fairly normal in untreated water supplies, and can come from any number of sources.

"Coliforms are abundant in the feces of warm-blooded animals, but can also be found in the aquatic environment, in soil and on vegetation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coliform_bacteria

Escherichia coli "is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms (endotherms)." (not just humans)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli#Role_as_normal_flora

Chryseobacterium meningosepticum "may be normally present in fish and frogs but are not normally present in the human microflora."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabethkingia_meningoseptica

I realize it's romantic to claim that all underpaid laborers are really grimy sleazebags who poop in your food, but that's not what this study demonstrates.

[rcrush]

34. Fecal matter is found on almost everything

It gets on your hands. You touch stuff. It gets on stuff.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

35. hell we found that shit in water fountains in public high schools

back in the 80's as part of a high school biology project...not sure this blows my skirt up...i would be willing to bet if they tested the soda guns in the bar area of fancy restaurants it would have been just as bad...

sP