Paul Dawson

Despite the subtitle, this really isn't a book about testing food myths. It's about a series of small experiments the authors did with their students, mostly aimed at testing how much potential there is to transfer bacteria (and to a lesser extent, viruses) to food by doing all the different kinds of things you might expect to contaminate food, including dropping it on the floor and double-dipping your chips into it.

It's kind of an odd little book. All the experiments are presented basically as if they were being written up for scientific publications, complete with all the numbers and statistics and careful little details, but all the material between them takes this sort of very determinedly breezy tone, explains biology basics for the complete layman, and features lots of drawings of little cartoon germs. The cartoons are kind of cute, and I always do appreciate having the methodology of experiments spelled out when they're being explained to me (even though I do admit to skimming those bits after a while, as they got very repetitive), but I have to say that the combination of the two things was a bit weird, as if the authors were very unsure just who their audience was supposed to be (or maybe differed with the publisher about it?).

As for their conclusions, well, they pretty much all boil down to: the world is swarming with micro-organisms and they will get onto your food, your hands, and pretty much anywhere else given the slightest chance, and basically anything whatsoever that you imagine might give them the chance will. Halfway through the book, I was fighting the urge to go find a sterile bubble to live in and to figure out a way to never have to touch food again. By the end, I was struggling not to just give up and think, "Well, it's almost impossible to avoid this stuff and I've very seldom gotten really sick from it, so maybe I should just stop struggling and accept the inevitable germiness of my dinner." Which is certainly not the message the authors intend to convey. I do like the analogy they use about eating food that's fallen onto the floor: that it's like using a seat belt in the car. The seat belt doesn't matter if you're not in an accident, and eating the food off the floor doesn't matter if the floor didn't have anything dangerous on it, but since you never actually know whether you're going to get rear-ended, or whether there's e. coli hanging out on your kitchen tiles, maybe you should just do the safer thing, anyway. They also include some food safety tips at the end of the book -- beyond just "maybe don't eat off the floor" -- which I think are pretty standard, and which I was mostly following anyway, but which are probably useful to review.… (més)

This book is trying to scare people. Some of the scenerios tested aren't as bad as they sound because most oral bacteria do not cause illness. (And people share oral bacteria other ways than through food. Often those who share food share their oral bacteria more intensly as well.)

None of the findings surprised me. Basically, bacteria can be transfered by food. The texture, moisture, and time in contact affect how many bacteria get transfered.

The stupid drawings over two pages, sometimes hiding text would have been more aggravating if the text had been worth reading.… (més)