Shopping Carts Contaminate Food

WKYC News just put out the most fascinating article - "Dirty Shopping Carts: Is your food at risk for contamination?" Now why didn't I think of this, it is so obvious? During the course of a day a grocery cart is likely to have harmful bacteria from raw meats spilled on it and plenty of other bacteria from previous users. Can't you just picture a toddler sitting in the cart and exploring the world with his mouth by chewing on the handlebar?

Barbara Gauthier, the reporter for the story, randomly picked five grocery stores in her town and tested a shopping cart from each of them for bacteria. Four of the five carts were found to have high bacteria counts.

The article says, "The results are no surprise to Bobbie Randall. She is a certified instructor of food safety and sanitation for Buehler's Food Markets. 'We do have a heightened interest in this,' Randall said. 'It is more important than ever because there are almost 80 million cases of foodborne illnesses every year.'"

Randall gave these helpful hints:

1."Wash your hands before and after hitting the grocery store. You will need a good 20 seconds of hot water and soap hitting all your fingers, just like a surgeon."

2. "Also use plastic bags offered in the meat and produce departments to help keep contamination down."

3."If there are juices coming from your meat product, treat them as a toxic substance."

4."Anti-bacterial wipes help, but realize once you’ve touched anything else, they’re contaminated again."

Well, I have another suggestion, keep your immune system strong. We are all exposed to germs all of the time; it is unavoidable. The trick is to have a strong body that can fight them off. Probiotic bacteria will help to boost the immune system and keep your body strong and helpful. (If you are not familiar with probiotics, see the article, "Probiotics Basics")