Gloves don't make you bombproof

This week, my wife watched a professional catering company setting out a room for conference meals.

One of the girls was setting out plates with her bare hands.  She then returned to the room with plastic wrapped bananas on a pile of plates.  She was wearing one plastic glove and contrived to remove the plastic wrap from the bananas with the ungloved hand.  She then carefully separated the individual bananas using the gloved hand.

What did this achieve?  I don't have a major problem with the plates being set out with bare hands, provided she washed her hands before she started.  The wrapped bananas were in contact with the plates, so anything on the plastic wrap might also be transferred to the plates.  Unless the girl was a part-time juggler, it's likely that she touched the banana skins with her bare hand as well as with the gloved one.  But people don't eat the skins and anyway, how many hands had touched the skins during harvesting and transport?

Many years ago, when I first started teaching food microbiology, O.P Snyder used to write regularly about the hazards associated with handling food with bare hands or with gloves.  He argued that the use of clean hands was less hazardous than unchanged gloves.  The critical words here are "clean hands".

There is no doubt that contamination can be transferred by manual handling of food.  Some regulatory authorities require that food handlers wear gloves and do not permit contact between bare hands and ready-to-eat foods.

However, simple observation in kitchens and service areas show that many food handlers do not know how to use gloves to improve food safety.  Chefs often use their fingers to assemble food; counter staff handle food while wearing gloves and then clean the counters before going back to handling food without changing the gloves.  When gloves are changed, are the hands washed?  Usually not, so hands that have become sweaty inside the gloves are then used to put on the fresh gloves and must inevitably transfer some bacteria to the new gloves.

Dirty gloves are just as dirty as dirty hands.  Wearing gloves does not make you bombproof - you have to keep your brain engaged when handling food.

I look forward with interest to the discussion that this post is bound to generate.

For more information on gloves in food service, go to:
http://www.foodsmart.govt.nz/elibrary/myth_busting_about.htm