Very few serious replies here, so I’ll try one …
I wonder if wearing gloves during food prep is the answer.
Stay with me here
- most infections are caused by by basic hygiene, scratching your hoo haw with hands that have touched other things, including other parts of your body.
- you touch raw meat as part of food prep (and women do most of the cooking)
- it’s well known and adopted that you need to wash your hands after touching raw meat, which ought to help prevent
- fingernails. Slime from raw meat also gets under your fingernails and most of us do not wash that well.
We have a series of observations leading to germs under fingernails after handling uncooked food as a possible disease vector. If it is a significant vector, how do you prevent it? I doubt people will start washing hands to that level of detail, but you already have a lot of cooks wearing latex gloves during food prep which should prevent it in the first place
As an alternative, consider not eating meat.
- Don’t put dirty objects up your hoohah
- Men: Wash your gentlemen bits (and your butthole/crack) every day; two or three times if needed
As an Italian I wonder: how do you manage that, not to say do it comfortably, without a bidet?
Either via the shower, or using sanitary wipes (e.g. Dude Wipes) when a shower is not available. In a pinch, a wet paper towel will help too.
Seriously. Sex is already dirty, help your partner by maintaining your hygiene. But seriously wash any raw meat you buy or butcher, and be careful of who cooks your food.
Edit: People assuming I don’t keep a clean kitchen and that I wash raw meat under a running faucet.
Washing meat is really just a good way to spread contamination around your kitchen, and mess up the meat. Wash your hands and prep surfaces, keep a clean kitchen, and cook the meat properly.
I only learned that “Washing” meat was a thing from people saying “Washing your meat is actually bad”. I never knew anyone to do this, and it sounds absurd to me.
Washing meat is pretty common in Chinese cooking. It’s not done over the tap however. Meat is fully immersed in cold water and soaked for a while, then pulled out, squeezed to drip-dry, then the water discarded. This helps to wash off any juices or blood and results in a cleaner taste. It can also help improve marinade results and further improve flavour (ostensibly by reducing the amount of off flavours).
Oh damn, that makes a lot more sense. I feel like there should be a different word than “Washing” for that, haha
That’s very similar to what I meant lol. Not sure why everyone assumes it’s bad to do. Like with a lot of things, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.
Some people do run the tap over a piece of meat and splash juices all over the place, contaminating the kitchen.
Yeah that’s definitely the wrong way
Think of it this way
- You don’t get sick from the bacteria, you get sick from their excretions
- Their excretions are on the outer surface (prove this to yourself by letting a piece of meat rot and see that it gets slimy on the outside)
- Therefore removing the excretions from the outer surface can make a piece of meat safer. Washing seems like it would do that
It can seem very compelling, it can seem like it ought to be true. It used to be commonly recommended.
I think 1 is inaccurate – bacteria themselves (not just their excretions) can make you sick.
I think the idea is that the bacteria are supposed to be too cold to multiply and make their excretions by the time you cook the meat (and thus kill them off), so unless the meat is already spoiled, cooking alone would be fine.
Ya, dirty sex sounds fun but it smells funny and can lead to infection. It’s not only smellz
People assuming I don’t keep a clean kitchen and that I wash raw meat under a running faucet.
Most washing is done under a running faucet, no? Or otherwise running water.
obvious joke :
be careful to not contaminate your “meat”
For a very brief period in 2020, men properly washed their hands. By 2025, barely 5% do, as before 2020.
/ball-washing intensifies/
