OK- now this is GROSS

[Chrisada]

This reminds me of all of the gross stuff including semen and fecal matter that can be found on hotel comforters. I always take the comforters off. Yuck.

[SoonerTexan]

This reminds me of all of the gross stuff including semen and fecal matter that can be found on hotel comforters.

*shivers* Ugh...that's why the idea of a honeymoon suite never appealed to me.

This reminds me of all of the gross stuff including semen and fecal matter that can be found on hotel comforters. I always take the comforters off. Yuck.

Me too! I am super grossed out after watching one of those shows that they go through the hotel rooms. Yuck!

and I will never drink fast food fountain drinks again:

Didn't think the fast food industry could get any grosser? Well it can.

This time, it's not the food, but the soda fountains to be worried about. According to Tom Laskawy, a media and technology professional and blogger for grist.org, a team of microbiologists from Hollins University found that 48% of sodas tested from the fast food fountains contain coliform bacteria, which is typically fecal in origin. And most bacteria found were antibiotic resistant, as icing on the cake.

The microbiologists published their findings in the International Journal of Food Microbiology. They tested 90 beverages from 30 soda fountains. Their abstract states:

...Coliform bacteria was detected in 48% of the beverages and 20% had a heterotrophic plate count greater than 500 cfu/ml. [...] More than 11% of the beverages analyzed contained Escherichia coli [E. Coli] and over 17% contained Chryseobacterium meningosepticum. Other opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms isolated from the beverages included species of Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia. Most of the identified bacteria showed resistance to one or more of the 11 antibiotics tested.
Laskawy notes that only one recorded outbreak linked to a soda fountain has occurred, and that was ten years ago. But on a smaller scale, these bacteria could cause sickness on an individual level that can go unreported.




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_413733.html

GROSS! I will remind myself of this the next time I am tempted to go out to eat. Thanks for posting this.

[ladymoreta]

I agree all this stuff is disgusting, but I kind of have the attitude of "it's everywhere, and my immune system has taken care of it so far", so I don't really worry about it much. I guess that comes from being a microbiology major before I switched to the business college. All the labs I did liked to have us collect samples from random places and see what grew. Seriously, crap (literally) is everywhere and on everything. Gross, yes. Avoidable, not easily. You already have antibodies for most of the infections you could get from them, so just wash your hands and make sure that your food is served at the appropriate temperature (hot or cold).

I do agree about the hotel comforters. I pull them off immediately. And my toothbrush goes in the medicine cabinet. There's enough air that it dries out, but it's not as exposed to the germs in the air or to the cat. (She likes to rub up against anything we have sitting out.) We also both put the toilet seat down before we flush.

[SoonerTexan]

I guess that comes from being a microbiology major before I switched to the business college. All the labs I did liked to have us collect samples from random places and see what grew.

Ha! Your like a combination of DF and I--I didn't know you did a stint in Microbiology--I wonder if you had any of the same professors as DF? You're right, though--DF found some NASTY stuff on his bike tire, and I'm going to keep my distance from the duck pond at OU from now on too

eeeewwwwww!!!! Ok, I had to say that, thank you. Better now.

Jenn

[Amiens]

True-

Of course, after our fellow iMSNer Amiens had her bad experience at DQ while moving across country, I've never set a foot in there either.

(If I recall, her entire family got sick after eating chicken nuggets from DQ midway through their drive across country...)

Jenn

You have an awesome memory! Our entire family got food poisoning while going on vacation to Yellowstone NP and I was 6 months pregnant with #3. We haven't eaten any of their cooked food at Dairy Queen since. We have gone twice to get Blizzards.

In the last couple of years we have scaled back out eating out, because we feel like junk after eating at fast food places. As dh's colleague likes to say "crap in, you feel like crap." He used another expletive but I cleaned it up.

This gives another reason to stay away.