Author Archives: Mayra Rivarola

Burger King: Paper towels in the bathroom please

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I have been working for Doug for almost 4 months now. I am happy to say that I have learned a lot.

One of these things is proper hand-washing. So every time I go to a public restroom I keep my eyes open and watch every detail.

I often notice when someone skips the hand-washing step or someone who doesn’t dry up afterwards.

Just the other day I went during my lunch break to Burger King to grab a double cheeseburger. I went to the restroom first, and when I was in one of the stalls, a woman came in with her kid, telling him to scrub his hands. I heard water running. Then they just left – but I didn’t hear any paper tearing.

Well, there wasn’t any. No, BK didn’t just run out of paper. They didn’t have a paper towel dispenser at all. Only a drier. And a very lousy one. The evidence:

BK employees should not only wash their hands, but dry them as well.

Frustrated I left, and hesitated: Can I still eat my burger, knowing that employees (or at least the women) don’t dry their hands properly in that establishment?

No more BK cheeseburgers for me. Doug wrote in a letter:

Blow dryers should not be used because they accumulate microorganisms from toilet aerosols, and can cause contamination of hands as they are dried by the drier (Knights, et al., 1993; Redway,et al., 1994).

Every bathroom should have running water, soap and paper towel.

Check out this other BK incidence: Restaurant sinks are not bathtubs

Hurricane Gustav and food safety

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I have been following Hurricane Gustav closely on the news. I choke when I see images of the storm and people evacuating their homes, the same homes that were devastated by Katrina 3 years ago.

As reported by the New York Times:

“More than one million households in Louisiana were without power, with most of the outages — about 300,000 — concentrated in the greater New Orleans area, Gov. Bobby Jindal said at a televised news conference. As flood waters and tidal surges continued to subside, city and state officials struggled to get electricity to hospitals and sent thousands of emergency workers onto streets to clear debris and fix downed power lines.”

Residents who are left without power should take the following precautions to minimize risk of foodborne illness:

1 – The refrigerator and freezer doors should be kept closed as much as possible to keep the cold temperature longer. A refrigerator keeps food at safe temperatures for about 4 hours if unopened. Dry or block ice also helps maintain the proper temperature: at or below 40°F for a refrigerator and 0°F for a freezer. 

2 – If any meat, poultry, fish, or eggs, where left over 40°F for more than two hours, it is safer to discard it.  A thermometer in your refrigerator helps you determine the temperature (make sure it is working properly).

Residents who are in flood areas:

1 – The safest is to stick with bottled water. However, if you don’t have access to this, you can also filter (through clean cloths) and boil the water for at least a minute. Water can also be disinfected with household bleach, which kills some, not all, pathogens. Add 1/8 teaspoon (8 drops) of bleach per gallon.

2 – Discard food that has come in contact with floodwater, including anything in cardboard boxes, home canned foods, or damaged cans.

A more complete guide can be found here, and please, stay safe.

Please, wash your hands first

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I was camping out at Yellowstone last weekend, trying hard to synchronize my food safety concerns and the limited resources of a campsite.

We arrived early morning, started setting up the tent and unloading the truck when I popped open a bag of mini rice cakes. The three boys I was camping with (shown at the left) quickly joined to share the treat.

I starred wide-eyed when I saw their dirty hands digging into the food. No offense to the guys but, I knew there wasn’t soap in the bathroom of the campsite, which doesn’t really matter, because they probably went in the woods anyways. In conclusion, there was most likely no hand washing before digging in.

I didn’t want to be a food safety geek, and I wasn’t going to start acting like all of their moms, so I sucked it up, looked the other way, and kept eating.

Luckily we all survived the trip safely.

Today a news story was published about 20 people getting sick at a wedding reception in Minnesota after eating from a bowl of chips. The chips were contaminated with norovirus, possibly spread through poop.

Ok next time, I promised myself, I will be that geeky mom and order everyone around to wash their hands before sticking them into that bowl of chips.

Dog or beef for dinner?

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I think it’s funny the way my roommate from India always asks before taking food from anyone if it contains any beef.

If the answer is yes, she tries hard to hide her face of disgust and politely says, “No thanks.”

It is not surprising. Indians consider cows to be sacred and magical, more than what we think of our pets.

I imagine the same reaction in American tourists when scanning the dog section of a restaurant menu during their trip to the Olympics.

The Beijing Catering Trade Association banned dog meat from the Menu of all the 112 designated Olympic Restaurants, to avoid this reaction of dog-loving tourists.

It is a big disappointment for those who were daring enough to try this treat they would never be able to consume in their own countries.

However, it is probably not going to affect the residents, since they don’t tend to eat dog meat during the hot months of summer anyway.

All this fuss about banning dog meat in Beijing during the Olympic season makes me wonder if officers should be more concerned about food safety rather than scaring off a few tourists.

In the end, isn’t killing a dog for its meat the same as having beef for dinner? My Indian roommate would probably agree.

Be wild – and safe

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I am planning on going to Yellowstone Park next weekend. I read this story and got a little worried.

About 30 people came down with symptoms consistent with the norovirus infection at the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge and High Sierra camps in the area, said Shane Sims, a specialist in the safety office at Yosemite National Park…

The hiker camps are particularly vulnerable to the spread of norovirus illness, because people enjoying the outdoors aren’t always careful about hygiene, Sims said.

So I decided to put together a few tips on how to keep your hygienic standards from home in the wild – especially if you have children or grandparents around.

1 – Pack one of those hand sanitizer bottles and use it as often as you can – before and after handling food, after bathroom breaks – you know it, whenever you would normally wash your hands with soap.

2 – While you’re at it, take a pack of wipes or moist towels (can probably be found at the baby section) and use it to clean your body (focus on face, underarms, groin, buttocks, and feet). You will not only kill bacteria that could make you sick, you will smell good and feel much better too.

3 – Take a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol and some cotton balls. Soak a cotton ball in alcohol and use it to rub your feet. This eliminates dangerous bacteria that could be forming around blisters or wounds. Change to clean socks.

4 – Quick bathroom tips: when going number one go directly into running water if possible or far away from the camp if not. When going number two go far away from the camp, and bury your poop like cats do. (Remember to use your hand sanitizer afterwards)

5 – Do not handle food if you have open sores on your hands, if you have diarrhea, or if you’re feeling sick in general. This will prevent a spread of infection.

6 – If you want to be sure about the water you’re drinking, carry with you a water filter or purification tablets like Iodine. Regular unscented liquid chlorine bleach also works. Follow the instructions on the label.  Most water sources are contaminated in North America and may contain guardia or cryptosporidium therefore are not safe to drink.

7 – Drink lots of fluids, rest plenty, and keep warm.

Follow these tips and reduce your chances of getting norovirus like the hikers above, or any other sickness that could ruin a fun trip. Enjoy the wild!

Super foods, super expensive

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I read this story yesterday

…many super foods like blueberries are popular because they allow you to enjoy health benefits without skimping on taste. They’re not alone: Super food lists widely vary, but here’s a list of 10 that show up on many nutritionists’ lists and on various Web sites.

The list included: acai, salmon, swiss chard, cherries, green tea, walnuts, blueberries, kefir, brown rice, ground flax seed. Varied ingredients with a common goal – to make you super healthy.

I quickly pulled my shopping list and added a few of those.

I spotted the blueberries – (yes!) – $6 for 2 lb. No way. I’ll stay with strawberries, they are probably almost as healthy anyways.

Walnuts were almost $10 a pack. I’m a college student, I can’t afford a $10 pack of nuts.

I chose the salmon fillets at the fish section, then saw the tilapia filets. It was $8 for salmon vs $3 for tilapia. Guess who won.

I ended up with only two items of my super food list: green tea and brown rice (which was actually a bit more expensive than regular, but bearable).

I guess it was super food, not super cheap. Sorry to find out I can’t afford being super healthy.

Give these cows some dried prunes

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Cow patty bingo, an American Red Cross fundraiser, had to be rescheduled to August 16 after two cows failed to poop. The cows wandered the bingo grid behind the third-base bleachers for 2 1/2 hours, but didn’t leave any patties behind, said Suzanne Phillips, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross in Burlington.

I was visiting a close friend about a week ago and he sent me to the store to get some “poop pills” – a bag of dried prunes. He eats about 4 or 5 each morning while reading the paper. 

His mother is another constipation victim of the family. She was telling me she cannot afford to skip her daily “poopy shake”– a mixture of 8 different types of fiber that she mixes with orange juice. She eats a ton of fruits and vegetables, and has a wide variety of natural laxatives in the medicine cabinet. This is the most impressive one here (in Spanish, sorry)


Maybe these cows could call my friend or his mom for some advice.

Read the story at: the times news