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 Have you ever attended a party only to eschew the offered fruit and vegetable platter dip because you can’t trust that the attendees knew better than to place the carrot that they already took a bite of back into the ranch dressing?
Well then hello there, spirit animal!
If you have ever seen it, ever been repulsed by it, or ever momentarily imagined smacking the dip vehicle (be it chip, pretzel, vegetable or fruit) from the offender’s hand’s before they make repeated contact with the dip, rest assured! A food scientist is now confirming what we have long suspected: double-dipping food is unhygienic.
To prove this, Clemson University Professor Paul Dawson conducted an experiment using chocolate dip, cheese dip, salsa and crackers. Professor Dawson looked at the bacteria left behind after a person had eaten the variety of dips and subsequently placed the dip vehicle, in this case, the cracker, back into the dip.
“I expected there to be not really much bacteria transfer [after the first bite] because of the small surface area on a cracker or chip when you bite it,” Professor Dawson said.
“But we actually found there were 1,000 more bacteria per millilitre in the dip from when you bit the chip than when you didn’t. That’s a significant amount. That’s more like a person-to-person transfer like the common cold and other contagious diseases rather than the typical food borne illness like E.coli and salmonella.”
However, not everyone believes that the issue of double-dipping is an earth-shattering one. Cathy Moir, a CSIRO food safety specialist argued that there are far worse unhygienic behaviors to participate in, namely not washing hands following a restroom visit.
Dawson’s work is detailed in the book, "Did You Just Eat That?"
Image source:
Gina / CC BY 2.0
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Re: Science Says Double-dipping is Gross, Unhygienic
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