Is free soft-serve ice cream for pregnant women a good idea?
Baskin Robbins is offering free soft serve ice cream to expectant mothers on May 21, 2008, in California, Chicago, New York, Nashville, and El Paso, Texas. It's apparently the beginning of a national roll-out of soft serve ice cream at Baskin Robbins.
I have no idea why they targeted expectant moms, or why they recruited a pregnant Tori Spelling as spokesthingy.
Andrew Reece and I did some quickie research and found the Australians, in particular, may have a problem with this promo.
Soft serve ice cream is on the Australian list of foods pregnant women should avoid. Sanitation with the equipment appears to be an on-going problem.
A 1996 study in Sydney, Australia found 49 of 86 samples of soft serve to have dangerous bacteria levels. Another study in Wisconsin in 2003, found 15 of 22 local soft serve machines at retail food service establishments to have dangerous levels of coliforms and other bacteria. In 2006, Iowa also found a high level of soft serve machines (23%) in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area to have dangerous levels of coliforms and other bacteria. Regular cleaning of machines with soap and sanitizer could reduce the number of bacteria found on the soft serve machines.
Poor hygiene can lead to the spread of foodborne illness through soft serve ice cream. Soft serve ice cream is typically kept at a higher storage temperature than frozen ice creams, which could lead to increased bacterial growth. Ice cream is high in moisture and protein content, which is favorable for bacteria to grow. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland has its own publication warning of such risks.
The risk appears minimal with good sanitation -- although our research was limited and forced by time constraints. A reader asked, would I take my pregnant wife for free B&R soft serve ice cream?
No.
http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/admin/trackback/72207
Yes, being pregnant in Australia, it is the first thing you are warned about. No soft cheese, sushi, salad bars, cold meats, pizza and ESPECIALLY no soft serve.
Thankyou for this well written post.
Talk about poor hygiene. I worked in ice cream shop during college and the soft-serve mixture came in bags that attached to a hose leading to the machine. At times the bags were kept on the floor of the freezer. And the floor was never what I would call clean. One time we ran out of bags of mix and the manager poured the leftover contents of two or three old bags into a bucket and put the hose of the machine into the mix. He had to do it a couple of times before milk truck came with more mix.
And here's one more way for the "experts" to control people. Only pregnant women in *certain western countries* "can't" eat a number of foods. I think that, as this post details, "The risk appears minimal with good sanitation". Duh. If you have rotten lunchmeat that's all slimy and smells bad sitting in your fridge - don't eat it. If you visit your local Baskin Robbins and notice that the bags of soft serve are laying on the floor (and you *CAN* see the floors behind the counter) then by all means - pass on it. Even if people are making their own home made ice cream, it can still be tainted with bacteria - soft serve is not the only ice cream that can be tainted. Again - duh.
Thank you for writing about this!
This is actually a bigger issue than simple food service sanitary practices. There is a bacteria (Listeria moncytogenes) that is contained in the above items (soft cheeses, cold cuts, soft serve, etc.) that is harmless to adults and even children, but attacks the unborn child causing still births and miscarriages. In newborns it causes sepsis, pneumonia and meningitis. The bacteria is found in soil, water, and plants and unlike other bacteria this one grows in cool moist environments. It is found in other foods, but other foods are cooked before serving, thereby killing the bacteria.
As to the previous post. This not an issue about experts trying to control people. It is about giving individuals the knowledge they need to make an informed decision. It is a valid issue to decide if an ice cream cone is worth the potential risk to an unborn child. A friend of mine lost their child to this bacteria. She got it from mozzarella cheese never knowing that this could pose a problem. Had she known, she would have avoided these potentially dangerous foods for the nine months she was pregnant. This bacteria does not show signs of rotting or spoilage. Any cold cut can carry it. Hard ice cream is not as big a problem as soft serve because soft serve is made at a higher temperature. The lower temperature prevents the bacteria from growing to dangerous levels. Home-made soft serve ice cream doesn't last very long before it is eaten. The bacteria is not given a chance to reproduce to dangerous levels before the product is eaten. Before you give advice on issues of people's health, perhaps you should first be informed about what you are talking about. But then again, if we don't let the "experts" share the information with us, we will have to make do with the information from "amateurs" like you.