Alright, this has bothered me for awhile.
How dirty are the tops of pop cans that I happily press against my lips to drink?
People do it all the time: it’s a natural reaction. Pop the top, and bottoms-up. I assume the Insides are ‘sterile’ but why are people so trusting of the outside of the pop can?
I have found a lot of them to be quite dirty, which is why I always wipe them off before drinking from them.
When our dining hall was under renovation, we had a “deli” with a beverage cooler from which we could choose a variety of fruit juices. One morning, upon purchasing a can of grapefruit juice and popping the top, I noticed a black residue similar to copy toner on my fingertips. Upon closer inspection of the can top, I found a solid ring of this crud all around the rim. Nasty isn’t even close to the word I was looking for.
Christopher Robin Hood - he steals from the rich and gives to the Pooh.
Depending on how exactly the can was shipped and handled before you got it, the top of the can may be anywhere from pristine to filthy.
Cans that are shipped in cardboard cases (12 or 24 packs) tend to be quite clean. Cans shipped in six-packs are more exposed, and tend to be at least a little dusty. Cans from vending machines are often disgusting.
I worked for a (thankfully) short while in a factory where soda can vending machines were made. I worked in the testing department. It was not at all uncommon for the machines to tear, rupture or otherwise cause a leak in a can. The soda would spray everywhere, leaving a sticky, sugary residue on everything, including the other cans in the machine, which were thereafer liable to pick up every trace of dirt and grime from any available source.
Ever since working there, I wash the tops of the cans I drink.
Soda bottling/canning plants are about the most sanitary food processing facilities I have ever seen. As a contractor I have seen the insides of many types of food production plants and as a whole they are pretty filthy.
Coke and Pepsi however, seem to be damn dear obsessive-compulsive about sanitation in their plants. I assure you those cans LEAVE the plant in a damn near sterile condition.
I also worked as a stock boy in my youth. We would walk on top of pallets of soda and sometimes use them as lunch tables. Cans would frequently burst and drain all over the tops of the others in the stack. Rats occasionally would be found in there licking up the sweet nectar that is half dried soda pop. Of course they left the requsite odd hair or turd behind as payment for the treat.
Not once did we ever wash the cans before putting them out on the shelves. Of course now it seems most soda is sold in those cardboard 12 packs.
But the question is, knowing what you now know, are you ever going to drink from a can you haven’t washed again?
I worked for a beer distributor for over a year, and to this day I pour my beer into a glass rather than drink from the bottle or can. A pallet may contain as many as 98 cases, and if one on the top gets punctured, you have a sticky, disgusting mess on about 90 cases below it. Bugs (those tiny gnat-like ones) love the stuff, and they get stuck to the beer residue on the cans. I also found that even if the cans leave the warehouse in pristine condition, beverage delivery drivers (at least most of the ones who worked there) were not the most, um, careful or clean people, and I don’T care to contemplate what other substances may have ended uop on those cans.