Food safety month, tip number one
Food safety month, has a nice ring to it, should be food safety year as more and more people are barfing from food related incidences and since we eat everyday. So, as I was perusing the streets of Winnipeg on my Vespa flying at a record fifty kilometers an hour, listening to the Flight of the Conchords for inspiration, first food safety tip dawned on me. Change your ragged dishcloth on a daily basis as they may harbor pathogenic bacteria. The dishcloth provides the perfect medium for bacterial growth which will eventually spread throughout the kitchen increasing the risk of foodborne illness. Analyses of these cloths have revealed extremely high bacterial loads coupled with significant numbers of mold and yeast. If you change your socks daily, shouldn’t you change your dishcloth? .jpg)
ROB MANCINI: The nasty dishcloth
I have inspected a number of households that use the same dishcloth over and over again without laundering. I used to do the same until my wife insisted that we launder our cloth daily.
The porous nature of dishcloths allow for the accumulation of small particles of food thereby providing a moist, wonderful environment for bacterial growth. Bacterial counts including mold and yeast recovered from such cloths have been amazing, not to mention the smell.
During my bachelor days, food safety and sanitation in general was somewhat questionable. The dishcloth, rather, dishrag, would be changed when the smell became unbearable, probably not the best thing to do, kinda like guessing whether poultry is cooked without using a thermometer.
It is simple, one could launder the cloth or place the cloth in a container of water in the microwave for a minute or so, that should do it.
Fecal coliform bacteria, including E.coli were recovered in such numbers during the production of the television series Kitchen Crimes that were horrific -- and don’t get me started on the amount of yeast and mold. I’m frightened as is.
