Friday, February 24, 2006

Dirty Ice

Talk about EWWWWW!

Jasmine Roberts never expected her award-winning middle school science project to get so much attention. But the project produced some disturbing results: 70 percent of the time, ice from fast food restaurants was dirtier than toilet water.

According to ABC News: "the 12-year-old collected ice samples from five restaurants in South Florida — from both self-serve machines inside the restaurant and from drive-thru windows. She then collected toilet water samples from the same restaurants and tested all of them for bacteria at the University of South Florida" (ahem, my alma mater). The rest is history.

Read about this enterprising girl's science project here

17 comments:

Marti said...

Ewww indeed! I rarely order a drink with fast fod (make that "never" now LOL)

Marti said...

Aw gee, I misspelled food - how sad is that? Can I blame dirty ice? LOL

cube said...

Yep, make that never for me too. No drinks with fast fod ;-)

tlm said...

I'm sure the cups (sans ice), lids, straws, etc. aren't all that sanitary either.

freethoughtguy said...

Yikes! Now I have an excuse for using vodka instaed ...

Sar said...

Uh, bottled water please!

M. C. Pearson said...

EGADS! That's enough to make me want to drink coffee!

Caz said...

Similar studies have been done on the ice that goes into drinks in bars (but without the toilet water comparison - stroke of brilliance that idea!) and the results are entirely gross. Enough to want a saint sit down and have a good strong drink, but not "on the rocks".

However, lets me realistic about the comparative data: toilet water is not being "handled" by anyone, so you would fully expect it to be perfectly clean (great use of good clean drinking water isn't it?).

Less than healthly ice stems from a number of sources in the the "ice making process", right up to and including the grubby little hands of the servers who touch the ice. Even the containers holding the ice are most often full of icky germs & stuff. So even if the water starts off clean, and the ice is clean, by the time dirty tongs, dirty hands, dirty containers.... and on it goes - well, by the time it hits someone's glass, the ice is filthy.

Just tell yourself that the alcohol kills the germs. Oh, well, that won't help much in a fast food joint. Hmm.

Well, Coke can clean a car engine, so just make sure you order Coke.

cube said...

This story emphasizes the efficiency of the immune system & how it is constantly neutralizing foreign bodies in our bodies.

Jamie Dawn said...

I'm thinking this study of hers shows that it is okay to drink toilet water in a pinch. I'd get it from the tank, though, and not the bowl.

cube said...

There you go. Our dogs were right all along ;-)

Minka said...

That is just: EWWWWWW...
I´ll think twice next time before I answer a question about more ice, with an affirmative head-nod!
And you being a cube yourself...it must have come quite as a shock.;)

Jen said...

Bring it on! I'll have to write a post about my thoughts on germ-phobia sometime...

birdwoman said...

and people make fun of me for buying the bottled water at fast food restaurants.

never buying soda there again!!
(*)>

cube said...

monika: LOL! If I didn't laugh about it, I'd cry. Thanks for understanding.

jen: germophobia...you?

birdwoman: have you heard what they're saying about bottled water?

MCF said...

Yeah, I never put in ice when its self serve and when the drinks are behind the counter I request no ice. Those machines keep the soda cold; why do we need ice? The answer is so they can sell less soda for more.

Anyway, I now have a better reason than being a cheap b@st@rd not to get ice in public. :)

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