She’s on a roll !
Benito Middle School student Jasmine Roberts examined the amount of bacteria in ice served at fast food restaurants.
Her project won the science fair at the New Tampa school, and she hopes to win a top prize at the Hillsborough County Regional Science and Engineering Fair, which starts Tuesday.
The 12-year-old compared the ice used in the drinks with the water from toilet bowls in the same restaurants. Jasmine said she found the results startling.
“I thought there might be a little bacteria in the ice, but I never expected it to be this much,” she said. “And I never thought the toilet water would be cleaner.”
For this project, Jasmine visited five fast food restaurants near the University of South Florida.
She placed the samples into sterile containers and tested them at a lab at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, where she volunteers with a USF professor.
At twelve, she already has a flair for making her material interesting and unusual. I wonder if she blogs. :-)
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UPDATE: She has won 1st place in the regional science fair mentioned above ($800 first prize). (Source: www.tampabays10.com)
The main problem is that most of these places have no maintenance planned for handling the ice machine. After all, they assume that since it is virtually isolated, no cleaning is really necessary. However, from my experience working at these places, it really doesn’t surprise me at the amount of bacteria that can grow.
Most of this is due to the hygiene of the individual(s) getting ice from the machine. Is the scoop cleaned daily? Does their hair/dander fall into the machine as they get ice? Is it transported to another receptacle that also has more employees accessing the ice? is the lid ALWAYS on the top of the ice dispenser at the soda station?
Honestly, it can be scary since bacteria is not killed by freezing and so it can grow unhindered.
Wow, this is awesome work from a 12-year old! I’d be curious to see where she is in the science world after she graduates from college. Proof that not all our youth are destined to become slackers!
p.s. I don’t even wanna know what search term you had to enter to score that caption picture! Aye carumba!
Love the picture. Interesting work for a 12 yearold. The scary this this is not new science. I have read similar stories over the years. I even remember seeing something like this on CNN sometime in the last year or so. If you ever observed how some of these fastfood places cleaned their equipment, you would never eat there again. Most people have a poor notion of hygiene. And you are letting them handle your food. I remember seeing a story were hepatitis was spread to quite a few people, because an employee did not properly wash his hands before handling food.
You find the same problem with beer taps. Yes, beer taps. Being a homebrewer, I find that most bars NEVER clean out the hose from the keg to the tap. Bacteria, and other little nasties build up, and you have bad (or at least interesting) tasting beer. Most better brewpubs, especially the ones who brew their own in house, have a means in place for sanitizing the lines. ALL the lines.
So think about it the next time you are quaffing a brew. Budweiser is SUPPOSED to be tasteless. It’s part of the style. If there is ANY other taste in in, chances are, that is this problem of little beasties in the lines.
However, if this is a Belgian Ale, like Corsendonk, fear not, because unlike bud, which is brewed in sterile conditions, other beers/ales, especially Belgians, are fermented in the open air, with whatever yeast and bacteria happen to be around and hungry for sugar.
Just my off-topic bantering. I thought that the beer drinkers in the crowd might find it interesting though.
But I babble!
Apparently the toliet is a pretty clean place. Mythbusters did a test where they checked the bateria levels at different places and the place with the least amount was the toliet seat. Go figure.
If people start dumping their drinks down the toilet, expect a dramatic increase in the amount of bacteria in toilets.
Give the kid a truckload of gold stars.
Why is greasy fried crap so popular anyway.
As for #4 – right on! Home brewed beer rules.If people want something with no taste they should try water(well that depends on where you live and where the water comes from). I ain’t no rocket surgeon but I’d like to see if there was some sort of correlation for Budweiser=Big Mac. Yeah, yeah I’m way off topic, but. I was provoked.
This is an interesting report, but it is also misleading. The bacteria in the ice is still at acceptable levels, and it is beneficial to actually have certain bacteria in your diet, even the bad kind. Your immune system needs to “practice” essentially, and if we lived in a world where bacteria was hard to find, the instant that a harmful amount of bacteria is introduced we’d all be pretty bad off.
Still another good reason to cook and eat at home! At best fast food is high fat and high sodium. Now we find out it is laced with bacteria to boot!