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 Are Restaurant Kitchens Cleaner Than Yours?New research suggests that at least one in seven home kitchens would fail the sort of health inspection restaurants commonly undergo. The study, carried out in Los Angeles County, California, concluded that just 61 percent of home kitchens would receive an A or B grade on such a screening and that at least 14 percent would fail. In contrast, 98 percent of restaurants in that area receive a B or higher. The results were based on an online survey asking respondents about things like fridge temperature and food preparation and storage practices. Experts believe the results are not representative of all households and that the percentage of home kitchens that would pass such an inspection is actually lower than estimated. More...
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Mine is clean.
I am carrying my heart~I am carrying my rhythm~I am carrying my prayers~But you can't kill my spirit~It's soaring and strong (Paula Cole's Me Lyrics)***We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We ARE spirtual beings having a human experience.(T.deChardin)***There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. (Albert Einstein)
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Ours probably wouldn't pass inspection, but we don't get sick from it and neither do guests.
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. --Dorothy Parker
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Babezy, I agree with your statement "but we don't get sick from it and neither do guests." I believe in being hygienic, but I think we over do it with the anti-bacterial cleaners. I sure hope my restaurant is cleaner than my home. For one thing, there are so many people coming in and out that any spot left uncleaned could lead to contamination whereas, here at home we all have each other's immunities anyway.
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The worst (IMHO) is dirty, wet dishrags left lying around. Any time any one uses a rag to clean something, they should always rinse it out, wring it out, and then hang it up to dry when finished with it. At one friend's house I counted half a dozen of these filthy things in the kitchen. Blechh!
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Wanderer, I think you're right about having each other's immunities. That makes sense to me.
Mickey Mud Turtle, those dishrags are disgusting! I refuse to use them altogether. Yuck.
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. --Dorothy Parker
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Anti-bacterial cleaners just immunise bacteria. Use bleach diluted with water, and avoid plastic cutting boards like the plague; they're just Club Med for pathogens. Wooden cutting boards are much more sanitary. I always laugh that Lysol kills 99.9% of germs. Great, but it's the other 0.1% that'll actually kill you !
Sanity is not statistical
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excaelis wrote:Anti-bacterial cleaners just immunise bacteria. Use bleach diluted with water, and avoid plastic cutting boards like the plague; they're just Club Med for pathogens. Wooden cutting boards are much more sanitary. I always laugh that Lysol kills 99.9% of germs. Great, but it's the other 0.1% that'll actually kill you ! Ya know, until maybe about 25 years ago when plastic cutting boards first came out, the big selling point was that they were so much more sanitary than wooden cutting boards. Like so many things, it seems the tide keeps changing on what is the cleanest cutting surface.
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Our health inspectors did the volte-face on those about ten years ago, after we'd been telling them that for the previous ten years. Ayeesh, as my friend Sylvester the Cat would say !
Sanity is not statistical
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grammargeek wrote:excaelis wrote:Anti-bacterial cleaners just immunise bacteria. Use bleach diluted with water, and avoid plastic cutting boards like the plague; they're just Club Med for pathogens. Wooden cutting boards are much more sanitary. I always laugh that Lysol kills 99.9% of germs. Great, but it's the other 0.1% that'll actually kill you ! Ya know, until maybe about 25 years ago when plastic cutting boards first came out, the big selling point was that they were so much more sanitary than wooden cutting boards. Like so many things, it seems the tide keeps changing on what is the cleanest cutting surface. Well, grammargreek, that conventional wisdom did change again. Initial studies showed fewer bacteria on wood cutting boards than plastic cutting boards after washing. It was thought that wood had antimicrobial properties. I wondered at the time about bacteria seeping into the nooks and crannies of the wood, but was confident that the researchers had considered this. No, they hadn't. Subsequent studies revealed that bacteria tended to hide deep within the wood so, really, wood cutting boards do harbor more bacteria than plastic cutting boards. Whichever you choose to use, just be sure to wash the board thoroughly after each use.
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I throw mine in the dish washer after every use... mainly because I cut chicken... but now....
He who sings scares away his woes. ~Cervantes
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Could someone link to citations for the cutting board studies?
In the 1990s (so before real internet) I remember a press release about a study done in one of the upper "M" states (cannot remember which one). I've never found the actual study.
The researchers had set-out to compare how well wooden and plastic cutting boards could be cleaned, expecting - for the precise nooks and crannies reason - that plastic would be superior. They decided to start with simple bio-load information, so they contaminated plastic and wooden cutting boards with known amounts of organisms, let them stand overnight, then cultured the next day to get colony counts.
The release was about this initial work (i.e. they had not completed the intended study when this was released), because what they found was the bacteria definitely grew on the plastic boards, but the wooden boards saw a decrease in bacterial load.
As I say, I've never found the original study, but I'd be really interested to anything anyone else has.
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Thanks! 
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Either way, if you clean with bleach and water you should be safe. Putting wood cutting boards in the dishwasher will destroy them pretty quickly.
Sanity is not statistical
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Here is an article abstract citing negative findings for wood cutting boards (1998):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9708248
This article abstract cites positive findings for wood cutting boards and negative findings for plastic cutting boards (2006):
http://www.adajournal.org/medline/record/MDLN.16640304/
Advice from the USDA:
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Cutting_Boards_and_Food_Safety.pdf
I remember in grad school in the mid-90's, when I was majoring in Nutrition Science, the consensus being that wood cutting boards are preferable to plastic. But, I remember later reading in a nutrition journal or newsletter of a study claiming that wood cutting boards were found to harbor bacteria deep within the wood, which is probably the 1998 article referenced above. If there was a more recent study refuting that, I did not see it at the time. Considering the conflicting research, though, I'm wondering if a cutting board's resistance to bacterial infestation depends upon the type of bacteria present. It would be interesting to see research testing this hypothesis. If it's found that certain strains of bacteria survive and multiply on certain materials but not on others, a specific type of cutting board could be recommended depending on the type of food being handled (with consideration to the strain of bacteria likely to contaminate the food). As the USDA article points out, it is best to use a different cutting board for different types of food anyway, i.e., one for meats and a separate one for produce. Also, washing cutting boards after each use as excaelis has advised, which is mentioned in the USDA article, too, will help kill bacteria.
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