Author Archives: Robert Mancini

Robert Mancini

About Robert Mancini

Robert Mancini hosted and provided research for the television series “Kitchen Crimes” for Food Network Canada, H.G. T.V. (U.S.) and Discovery Asia. He is currently a certified Public Health Inspector in Manitoba and the health protection coordinator/specialist in food safety for Manitoba Health. He holds a Master’s Degree in Food Safety through Kansas State University. He enjoys playing with his 3-year old boy, violin, and running.

Blowing out birthday candles, not a food safety risk

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I recently celebrated my birthday, enjoying an evening of festivities with friends and family and of course cake, candles and all. My kids ended up eating the majority of it and left me with the scraps, all good. I wasn’t worried about food safety when I blew out the candles on my cake, insignificant food safety risk.

Elizabeth Sherman with Food and Wine writes

In the newly released issue of the Journal of Food Research, a study called “Bacterial Transfer Associated with Blowing Out Candles on a Birthday Cake.” Scientists suspected that blowing on your cake might actually spread germs from your mouth out onto the cake’s icing, which sounds obvious when you take a second to think about it. To prove their claims, they spread a layer of icing onto foil and placed birthday candles on top. They asked participants to eat a slice of pizza, and then “extinguish the candles by blowing.”
Here’s where things get a little gross: Once the researchers tested samples, they found that the number of bacteria on the icing had increased by 1,400 percent after it was blown on.
Yes, that is a disturbing factoid. But if you are reading this in the middle of your child’s birthday, there’s no need to cruelly cancel the festivities mid-party or throw the cake in the trash.
The Atlantic happened to call up Paul Dawson, a professor of food safety and one of the study’s authors, to figure out whether or not we need to be worried about that germ infested birthday cake we’ve been eating over the years.
“It’s not a big health concern in my perspective,” he says. “In reality if you did this 100,000 times, then the chance of getting sick would probably be very minimal,” he told the magazine.
Your germ-coated cake is still totally edible. Just try to forget all about this study next time you’re singing “Happy Birthday.”

Warning: Communion bread contains gluten

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I grew up Catholic and still go to church every Sunday with my family. I remember my father dragging me out of bed every Sunday to attend mass. Then afterwards, in the true Italian spirit, we would have a massive feast with extended family, heavy on the carbs, great time.

During mass, I was never a huge fan of everyone sipping out of the same wine goblet, always found that gross, but never thought of gluten in the communion bread, especially for those with Celiac disease.

The New York Times report:

The unleavened bread that Roman Catholics use in the celebration of Mass must contain some gluten, even if only a trace amount, according to a new Vatican directive.

The directive, which was dated June 15 but received significant attention only after it was reported by Vatican Radio on Saturday, affirms an existing policy. But it may help to relieve some of the confusion surrounding church doctrine on gluten, a protein that occurs naturally in wheat and has become the subject of debates over nutrition and regulation.

The issue is especially urgent for people with celiac disease, a gastrointestinal immune disorder that causes stomach pain, diarrhea and weight loss and that can lead to serious complications, or for those with other digestive conditions that make them vulnerable even to small amounts of gluten.

Many other people who do not have celiac disease may nonetheless have a sensitivity or allergy to gluten, and yet others have adopted a gluten-free diet in the belief that it is healthier — although science is far from clear on this point.

In both the United States and the European Union, the description “gluten-free” can be legally applied to foods made with wheat starch from which almost, but not absolutely, all gluten has been removed — the upper limit is 20 parts per million. The Catholic church will allow bread of this kind to be used for communion.

But it will not allow truly gluten-free altar breads made with rice, potato, tapioca or other flours in place of wheat. (The Anglican Communion has taken a similar position, while some other Christian denominations consider such breads acceptable.)