Ice at fast food restaurtants dirtier than toilet water

[cali]

Florida student found that the ice at fast food restaurants is actually dirtier than the toilet water at the same establishment.

The student, 12-year-old Jasmine Roberts, hypothesized that the ice at fast food joints was probably dirtier than the toilets.

So she went to five fast food restaurants and collected samples.

She ordered cups of ice and put them in sterile beakers. She also went into bathrooms, flushed the toilet once, and collected a sample.

The findings were pretty disturbing.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ice-is-dirtier-than-toilet-water-2012-10

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

1. The first findings in Chicago are dated 2007...

...safe to say, this is the case anywhere you go.


Bottoms up!

[Iggy]

2. Uhhhhhhhh

I work in the restuarant biz... most, if not all cities/towns enforce building codes whaich require filtered water to be
supplied to ice machines.. and that a device called a "backflow preventer" is installed on this water
line- to prevent any sort of backwash to occur in the line.

No backflow preventer installed? then you don't pass the req'd health dept inspection and you don't get
your license to open/operate your restaurant.

Cleaning protocol requires the ice storage box be cleaned regularly.

I'm not sure what restaurants this "survey" was done at-- if it's fly by night mom and pop
sort of places that aren't inspected by the health dept. and/or don't clean their restaurants,
then yes, I can see why their ice might be dirty.

but I can more or less guarantee this is rare at a McD's or other QSR type stores.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

3. LOL! What you don't know is a lot!!!

It's mostly a problem created by your employees wiping their ass then not washing their hands before scooping the ice!

Seriously dude?

[Iggy]

5. uhhhh

weak example.

if one is not washing their hands after doing #2 (you have to prove to me this is happening in ALL
QSR restaurants)and then using a SCOOP.. how are germs getting in the ice?? does the scoop not
have a _handle_ on it?

in stores I work in, the scoop is not stored/left in the ice box-- and it is washed regularly.

again, I can't verify what is happening in Clyde's Grease Burger joint-- I can tell you cleanliness
protocol is taken seriously in the chain restaurants... they know if someone gets E Coli from
their food, there's going to be lawsuits, and $1,000's of dollars are going to be lost. likely the
offending restaurant will be closed for weeks.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

7. MSNBC: Phoenix, AZ, 2006

"We took our hidden cameras to 20 food service locations: fast food places, mall eateries, hotel restaurants and stadium vendors. We collected ice samples from each place for testing. And as we ordered our drinks, we carefully observed how employees actually handle ice.

Right away we saw employees dredge the cups directly through the ice with their bare hands. This is a big food safety no-no—and a health code violation."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13775964/ns/dateline_nbc/t/dirty-ice-can-make-you-sick/

Just because it's a health code violation doesn't mean it isn't occurring.

[Pathwalker]

22. They closed down an Arbys here, for making people sick.

There was an employee with cryptosporidium who didn't wash his hands after using the restroom. I was one of those who got very, very sick. By the time the Health Dept. finished interviewing me ( I had only eaten out at one place in the month prior - that Arbys), they were able to nail down the location, and raid the Arbys. That man had infected the entire place, and all the employees, plus 39 people, including me. Choose your restaurants very carefully. If you don't, you may regret it for a long, long time.

[hobbit709]

4. My mom worked at McD's for about 10 years back in the 80s.

that's the main reason I won't go there after she told my how things were.
And here in Austin, it takes about 4 days for slime mold to infiltrate an ice machine. My wife had to clean the one at the shelter once a week when she was the Food Service Coordinator there.

[Odin2005]

25. Slime molds can infaltrate ice machines???

Those things are like The Blob!

[Scootaloo]

6. Inspections aren't terribly thorough

The workload for the inspectors is usually pretty damn huge. Mostly they're looking for obvious, glaring problems. Plus quite frankly it's not as if health inspectors stop by every day. Cleaning gets pretty spotty in most places, unless the manager figures "oh, we're due for inspection." How recently do you think the filters were changed? How about hte lines? The ice box SHOULD be regularly cleaned, but with the work schedules in these places, you often have to hope that magical elves show up to do it for you one night.

I've worked in these place for most of my working career - well, never a fast food chain, but having worked in actual regularly-inspected restaurants, I can tell you... anywhere you have food, a LOT of people going in and out and in and out over and over again... Isn't going to be sparkling and sterile.

Never, ever ever order soft-serve ice cream. NEVER.

[LuvNewcastle]

8. Very true.

The Health Dept. can bust people on all kinds of violations but they seldom do. Their job is to inspect for general cleanliness and check for problems that would cause the more serious and deadly food-borne illnesses. For instance, a cooler or freezer that's not cold enough will get a restaurant in trouble. Usually, if a place doesn't have any major problems, the Health Dept. won't look very hard for little shit. When a restaurant can't seem to get the basics right is when the Health Dept. will look for smaller violations and shut a place down. They're not going to give a perfect score; they always find something.

Keeping a restaurant clean is a very difficult task. There's always a mess, whether it's a spill, breaking plates, taking out garbage, etc. Food preparation is inherently nasty and you have to work very hard to make the place acceptable, much less clean. After working 20+ years in the food/beverage industry, I don't eat in restaurants all that often. I just don't think it's healthy to do it all the time.

[2on2u]

16. More proof of life on frozen planets within our reach.... yeah!!

[Edweird]

9. I've always ordered my drinks 'no ice' out of cultural habit.

This certainly encourages me to maintain my preference.

[Trailrider1951]

10. Hey, where is Marvin Zindler when you need him?

Anyone who lived in Houston from the 70's on knows who I'm talking about. He had a restaurant report on a local TV station about what the health department inspectors found on a weekly basis in local eateries. His punchline was: "Slime in the ice machine!"

[kentauros]

30. Here's one of his reports

with the slimy portion showing up around 1:40

[Robb]

11. Perhaps counterintuitively, it's more that toilet water is quite clean, IMO.

A ceramic bowl that gets scoured with caustics at least twice a day, and rinsed with 1.6 gallons of water hundreds of times every day?

[BootinUp]

14. lol nt

[randome]

17. Way to think outside the box!

[Robb]

20. Three generations of plumbers.

Water is water.

[Quantess]

29. That's what dogs say!

Why is that human pooping in the water bowl?

[midnight]

12. AFSCME Union Video: must watch

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/1027143/

[FLSurfer]

13. After reading the article, I'm a bit confused.

The science fair participant went to 5 restaurants and got a sample of ice and toilet water.
70% of the time the ice contained more bacteria.
How could that happen, mathematically?

[eShirl]

15. it was water taken after a fresh flush

before the new water had a chance to sit there and let things grow in it

[HiPointDem]

23. he means if there were 5 establishments, 70% = 3.5 establishments.

[sl8]

19. I was wondering about the same thing.

Last edited Sat Oct 20, 2012, 10:40 AM - Edit history (2)

If she sampled in 5 locations, the results should be in increments of 20%, yes?

It turns out that she took two ice samples from each location.

At one location, the toilet water had more bacteria than the 2 corresponding ice samples.

At one location, the toilet water had more bacteria than one corresponding ice sample, but less than the other.

At three locations, the toilet water had less bacteria than both corresponding ice samples.

Altogether, 7 of 10 ice samples had more bacteria than the corresponding toilet water sample.




Edit: Changed "5%" to "20%". Doh!

[HiPointDem]

24. or she could have taken 10 samples of toilet water. in one instance, ice was cleaner than one

toilet sample, but not the other.

[sl8]

26. She could have ...

but according to the description of her methodology & the graph of her results, she used 2 ice samples and 1 toilet water sample per location.

http://www.wtsp.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=25442

The description I gave in my first post was based on the graph of her results.

[HiPointDem]

27. ok, didn't see that

[Maine-ah]

18. I bet she would get the same result out of most restaurants

and not just fast food establishments. I've been in the restaurant industry for 17 years now, and I know for a fact that most ice machines are not cleaned out nearly as often as they should be.

[mucifer]

21. Wow makes me wonder why I am not dead.

I get an icy soda once or twice a week. Guess I'm lucky or I have a pretty decent immune system for now.

I think I probably have too much Oscar Madison in me.

[GeorgeGist]

28. Junk science.

But then she's only 12.