“Yuck” factor hits a new market: soda fountains

Soda Fountain at the T-Bone Tooter in Virginia by WoofTeacher, on Flickr

So by now you know not to order the “pink slimed” beef at the drive through. So you’re going to just get a salad and water, but not bottled water because you don’t want to contribute to the plastic waste disposal problem or because you want to avoid the chemicals in your water. So it’s just water from the fountain in your own cup.

Might want to rethink that fountain drink. Tom Laskawy over at Beyond Green Blog (he’s also a Grist.org writer) has quoted from a a paper in the International Journal of Food Microbiology by a team of microbiologists from Virginia’s Hollins University in which tested samples found many bacteria (including e. Coli, Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia) far in excess of drinking water standards.

The real kicker? Many of the pathogens were antibiotic-resistant.

As for “only one outbreak from about ten years ago was linked to a soda fountain,” I wonder if since we are all tuned to pathogens in the meat, disease tracking questionnaires are not designed to pick up on this particular threat.

Well, you wanted a reason to stop drinking soda, right?

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays, hosted by FoodRenegade who knows better than to drink that nasty stuff!