Dirty hands, diseased salad

I’m hoping you are feeling well today, after yesterday's Independence Day celebrations. However, If you are not -- it might not be just the liquids in yesterday's diet that are to blame.

If USDA’s new research is to be believed, 9 out of 10 people sharing food with you on the 4th either didn’t wash their hands at all or washed them poorly. Unfortunately, this lack of understanding of safe food handling likely lead to 5% of you enjoying a salad cross contaminated with bacteria and viruses from raw animal products. Appetizing, isn’t it?

Summer outdoor cooking is prime time for food borne pathogens. Unfortunately it looks like people are also making it easy for these tiny monsters, as most don’t have a good grasp on how to handle food safely. The numbers I gave above are a gross generalisation of a recent USDA study that is helping us to figure out why 48 million Americans catch foodborne illnesses every year. Let me tell you more!

In the study, volunteers where divided into two groups. A group of 182 people was shown a new video that explains how and when to use food thermometer. Another group of 201 was not shown any instructions. All of them where then put into a test kitchen and asked to prepare turkey burgers and salad. The volunteers were videotaped as they worked.

Food Safety News

So how bad were they?

Well, you already know only 1 out of 10 properly washed their hands. In addition they failed to properly use the thermometers (many even after the instructional video), and an overwhelming number of the cooks cross-contaminated multiple items in the kitchen when handling raw meat and failing to wash their hands or utensils.

Some learning was happening though. 75% of those who watched the training video at least tried to use a meat thermometer. Only 34% of the cooks in the no-video control group used thermometers at all.

It is also a relief that only 5% of the cooks where so messy in the kitchen that they cross contaminated the leafy greens. Most often they were instead contaminating the spice containers (48% of the cooks).

USDA has made a handy poster about the appropriate cooking temperatures for different meats. As a side note, it also has a reminder on the importance of cleaning, separating different products and chilling food to keep it safe. But how effective are the educational materials? And whom are they reaching?

FSIS USDA

Rolling the dice of blame

The general public does not know what it is not told. And telling the public through information channels they don’t use, or in ways that they are not interested to listen, or are unable to understand, is not reason enough for us to throw our hands in the air and wail “but we told you so!”

While it’s tempting to blame the uneducated public for their failures, I think public health professionals have much better ability to create change than single individuals in the grocery stores and home kitchens.

Putting blame somewhere where there is little possibility for action is rather unproductive, don’t you think? Ultimately, it is the failure of our education system and outreach campaigns. So rather than roll our eyes at this epic fail, let's roll up our sleeves. In my opinion, this sounds like a perfect place to put our risk communication, social media, public advocacy, and AMAZING amounts of food safety knowledge to work.

Because the question is, how do we turn this ship of dirty hands around and sail it to a safe haven of healthy, uncontaminated summer barbecues?

For starters, I might take the WHO’s “Risk Communication applied to food safety” handbook to the hammock for inspiration. Or maybe I’ll try out my skills in convincing my relatives to work that soap into a lather for a full 20 seconds. They already know I’m a hopeless nerd, so there’s not much to lose here.

I want us all to say a solid NO to those horrible nightmares of campylobacter chicken juice dressing trickling over a delicious strawberry-cashew-lettuce salad. All of us have those, right! Right?

WHO