Some people eat meals around a common bowl, often using fingers to dip. Isn’t this a case of multiple “double dipping,” and isn’t there an increased chance of spreading disease when eating in this fashion? Are their infectious disease rates significantly raised by this behavior? Is this another reason disease rates are higher in areas of more primitive habits?
I am not sure about this exactly, but MythBusters had an episode where they actually tested it out. They Busted the myth, saying that “the amount of bacteria in some salsa after double dipping was not significantly increased, certainly not to the point where there would be additional danger to humans.”
Hope that helped a little
Yeah, but my question is about people dragging their sucked-on fingers through the mixture, repeatedly. Eeew. Doesn’t that introduce lots of types of bacteria into the common food supply?
I’m sure it increases the risk of spread of bacteria and disease of course it does. It certainly doesn’t make it safer than as if it wasn’t happening. Increases the risk is still an increase in risk it’s not guaranteed spread of anything. The risk is increased so I think it really depends on the base risk factor to begin with I mean if you’re talking a third world country then to begin with you may have dirty hands no clean water to wash hands to begin with not so clean bowls or utensils and food not prepared well obviously there’s a big chance something’s gonna spread whereas in most civilized societies like America to start off with we use perfectly clean dishes wash hands with clean water and prepare food correctly the risk of double dipping probably doesn’t even raise the risk factor to the base risk factor in worse places. But the bottom line is you never know.
I’d guess that it would depend on if a person was sick or not. Saliva has a ton of bacteria in it naturally, but none that would be especially harmful to others unless that person was in fact sick at the time. Just like open-mouthed kissing and such. We’re not going to get sick from them unless they are sick.
I guess at that point it’d come down to your comfort zone. If it’s an airborne disease, you’ll probably get sick whether they put their hands in the bowl or not anyways. Otherwise, I wouldn’t really worry too much about it.
ok. But I’m still hoping an epidemiologist (or Qagdop) will weigh in with some facts.
I’d also like to see an expert or any formal studies…
But let’s rephrase the question as “increased chance of transmission compared to what?” I guess it’s just me, but sharing a communal bowl sounds miles safer than kissing any 2-year-old. This same 2-year-old needs help with bathing, diapers, laundry, etc. and while you’re doing the laundry, they’re putting every object they can find in their mouth. If your wife is taking care of a 2-year-old and you have sex with her… well, again, just how dirty is that food?
I certainly wouldn’t expect communal bowls to be more important in transmitting disease than other “primitive habits” - parasites, in particular are often spread because of feces in the dirt streets and untreated drinking water. In some places, the 2-year-old looks positively clean compared to the water you’d use to wash him with.
ETA: Also worth pointing out that many communal eating situations prevent direct touching of the food. For example, you would use flat bread or rice to pick up the main dish and you have your own portion of bread or rice. Since you only touch the bread or rice and you’ve eaten that, you don’t come in contact with food that anyone else would eat.
What’s being asked about here would be food-borne illnesses, and that’s essentially illnesses associated with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. There’s really not a great lot of evidence that things like colds, influenza and your basic respiratory illnesses are transmitted via food. Respiratory diseases are generally more aerosolized particle transmission, via sneezing and coughing and the like. Saliva, not so much. And if you’re around a person who coughs on food, they’re also coughing in your direction and you’re breathing those particles in anyway.
Now, pathogens causing food-borne illness include viruses like the norovirus, hepatitis A, and others. Bacterial intestinal pathogens include the traditional salmonella, e.coli, shigella, campylobacter, and many many others. But most of those generally get into the food not by double dipping, but by the fecal-oral route, generally due to poor hygiene and poor food handling by the preparer. This inoculates the dish, and allows the pathogen time to reproduce in sufficient numbers to infect others.
It’s not impossible that some partygoer with poor hand hygiene will stick their fecally-contaminated fingers into the dip as they load up their chip, and inoculate someone else, but that’s not the usual route. Small inoculum size and inadequate time to reproduce in the food limits that.
Again, saliva generally is not seen as a big vector for these illnesses.
I don’t worry much about double dipping or an occasional finger in the communal bowl as a disease vector. (I’m not thrilled from an aesthetic point of view, however.) I worry more about improper hygiene and/or preparation on the part of the preparer.
Make sense?
Yep. Thanks.
And isn’t this a reason why in some cultures the left hand is NEVER used when eating because it’s the one reserved for personal hygiene?
Ah-yup, that’s right, MLS.
In at least some cases, even in those ‘primitive’ cultures, they don’t really do this.
For example, I’ve seen video of a meal in Africa where everyone sat around a common bowl, and used their hand to take food from it. But they didn’t keep dipping out – they each dipped out a large serving and dropped it onto a big green leaf that was in front of them. Then they used their hand to eat from that. Really not that much different from our culture, where food from a common dish is put onto individual plates (except with a serving spoon rather than your hand).