Hand sanitizer not required anymore?

[Ocean Boy]

A little suggestion: How about filling your plate, dashing over to the sink, wash your hands and enjoy your meal.

 

 

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What sink?

[dmc6469]

Some of us are allergic to hand sanitizer. I just try to be very careful

 

 

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I'm not allergic to it but I cannot stand sanitizer. It makes my hands crack and get dry so fast. Even just using it once. I wash my hands and that works for me.

[jbmom2120]

What sink?

 

 

Most newer ships have a sink at the entrance to the buffet [emoji2]

 

 

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[poncho1973]

Gloves give a false sense of security too. Ever been to a restaurant where the prep people wear gloves? Watch everything they touch while wearing those gloves. It's not really any more sanitary.

 

Your point on being no more sanitary can be accurate, but you missed that is exactly what the last section is telling the people not to do.

 

Wash your hands and change gloves...

 

I had an encounter once with a manager of a sub chain (you know... the one built by former first responders) who changed the trash bag, walked back, and wrapped my sub.

 

I told him I didn't want that sub with trash hands.

 

His response "DUH! I'm wearing gloves! It's sanitary!"

 

I hope you guessed that I didn't purchase my intended meal and left. There is a lot more to that particular story, but that's the basic gist of what happened.

Edited November 11, 2016 by poncho1973

[Paulxyz2004]

We just got off the Liberty of the Seas. We have been on several cruises and were pleased that they had someone at the door of dining areas reminding EVERY person to use hand sanitizer. On the Liberty they had a 'greeter' but he/she did not mention or have sanitizer. It was available, but only about half the people even noticed or used it.

 

This is especially worrisome on the Windjammer where every person touches the buffet utensils. I personally noticed one lady cough a raspy cough into her hand, then move to the buffet line, yuk.

 

Is this new to all ships?

 

Fortunately it´s never been required! Hand sanitizer belongs in Hospitals and dr´s Offices, but certainly not anywhere around a cruise ship and the eating venues.

 

I make it a Point to ignore those trying to force it on me and to not use it.

 

Handwashing does the trick and no sanitizer can Substitute Hand washing.

[squadron]

Maybe you just should refrain from touching your food or your face.

 

But I love the breads and cookies!! Guess I'll have to take the risk.

[davidfsjr]

I have also considered bringing disposable plastic gloves to handle the utensils in windjammer. I wish they offered them at the entrance but they cost money and I can't see them going that way.

I personally have contracted the gestural intestinal bug twice. Not a fun way to spend two days of a vacation.

 

You would also need them at the elevators (the buttons everyone touches), all handrails (think of those thousands of filthy hands not just touching but sliding down them, smearing up a concoction of who knows what), and anywhere else outside of your own personal cocoon. Bacteria is not only spread by the food you eat you know? And quit touching your face and rubbing your eyes those are perfect entry points and a latex glove over your head causes some other problems.

[Ocean Boy]

But I love the breads and cookies!! Guess I'll have to take the risk.

 

Or eat the cookies with a knife and fork.:D

[Paulxyz2004]

... a latex glove over your head causes some other problems.

 

What Problems would it cause? I´d say it resolves some problems;):eek::D

[davidfsjr]

What Problems would it cause? I´d say it resolves some problems;):eek::D

 

You may be right:D

[just_looking]

 

I just wanted to point out that these guidelines are for food service employees. The woman in the photo looks like she might be working in a school or day-care. I have taken a food-service safety course. Many of the regulations are best practices that can apply to everyone (pull hair back when preparing food, refrigerate leftovers promptly, etc.) But the "wear gloves when handling ready-to-eat foods" rule does not apply! Otherwise none of us would ever be able to eat a sandwich, grapes, cookies, cheese & crackers, etc etc etc without wearing gloves! It's a food-service safety rule so that the workers' germs don't get passed to your sandwich. But if you are washing your hands before you eat, feel free to pick up your sandwich; gloves won't make a difference.

[davidfsjr]

I just wanted to point out that these guidelines are for food service employees. The woman in the photo looks like she might be working in a school or day-care. I have taken a food-service safety course. Many of the regulations are best practices that can apply to everyone (pull hair back when preparing food, refrigerate leftovers promptly, etc.) But the "wear gloves when handling ready-to-eat foods" rule does not apply! Otherwise none of us would ever be able to eat a sandwich, grapes, cookies, cheese & crackers, etc etc etc without wearing gloves! It's a food-service safety rule so that the workers' germs don't get passed to your sandwich. But if you are washing your hands before you eat, feel free to pick up your sandwich; gloves won't make a difference.

 

Gloves or bare hands? It's a wash

February 14, 2005|Rosie Mestel | Times Staff Writer

There's something reassuring about watching restaurant workers handle our food with gleaming gloves, but the appearance of extra cleanliness may be no more than that -- appearance. That's what a team of Oklahoma scientists suggests after studying the flora and fauna on hundreds of tortillas purchased at fast food eateries in Oklahoma and Kansas.

 

The tortilla testing team, led by Robert Lynch, an occupational and environmental health professor at the University of Oklahoma, was addressing a meaty debate among food safety scientists -- whether donning gloves actually lowers the chance that germs end up in food and thus the chance that customers will come down with food poisoning.

 

 

The case for gloves: They keep food away from bare hands, which are constantly touching items such as money, raw food, door handles and faucets -- the kind of places illness-causing microbes can end up.

 

The case against gloves: They're only squeaky clean if they're new, and they won't help matters if they foster a culture of complacency and backsliding on hand-washing.

 

In the study, published in the January issue of the Journal of Food Protection, Lynch and co-workers chose tortillas as a test case and purchased 371 of them, one at a time, at 140 restaurants from four fast food chains in Wichita, Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

 

Roughly half of the samples were collected from gloved workers, the others from those who were ungloved.

 

The scientists sealed the tortillas in sterile containers, stuffed them in a cooler and transported them to a microbiology lab.

 

There, a small piece of each tortilla was blended in sterile fluid and cultured in nutrients to see what grew -- and, specifically, if microbes that flourish inside us would show up.

 

The reassuring news: Very few of the samples spawned cultures of the microbes being tested, which included Escherichia coli (some forms of which can make us sick) and Staphylococcus aureus (a germ that's common around the nose, mouth and rectum and that can cause skin infections).

 

The disconcerting news: There was no statistical difference between glove-handled tortillas and ones that were touched by human flesh. Tortillas handled with gloves gave rise to microbe growth 9.6% of the time; those touched with hands, 4.4% of the time. But the sample size was not large enough to establish that the rates were truly different.

 

Dean Cliver, a professor of food safety at UC Davis, said he wasn't too surprised by the findings, because studies have shown that dirty hands almost inevitably contaminate the outside of gloves as the user puts them on.

 

"The main purpose of gloves is they look good to customers and inspectors. The only possible exception is if people have some kind of skin infection," he said. "Hand-washing is still key ... gloves are more a matter of keeping up appearances."

 

Los Angeles Times ArticlesCopyright 2016 Los Angeles Times

[just_looking]

Gloves or bare hands? It's a wash

...

 

The disconcerting news: There was no statistical difference between glove-handled tortillas and ones that were touched by human flesh. Tortillas handled with gloves gave rise to microbe growth 9.6% of the time; those touched with hands, 4.4% of the time. But the sample size was not large enough to establish that the rates were truly different.

 

Dean Cliver, a professor of food safety at UC Davis, said he wasn't too surprised by the findings, because studies have shown that dirty hands almost inevitably contaminate the outside of gloves as the user puts them on.

 

"The main purpose of gloves is they look good to customers and inspectors. The only possible exception is if people have some kind of skin infection," he said. "Hand-washing is still key ... gloves are more a matter of keeping up appearances."

 

The professor says it's because the germs get on the outside of the gloves when they put them on - but I wonder also how much of it is employee ignorance about what they can & can't do with the gloves on, such as the story poncho told:

 

..

I had an encounter once with a manager of a sub chain (you know... the one built by former first responders) who changed the trash bag, walked back, and wrapped my sub.

 

I told him I didn't want that sub with trash hands.

 

His response "DUH! I'm wearing gloves! It's sanitary!"

...