I don’t believe in very many rules, but I must say that the one rule that’s never let me down, at least not in the medical realm, is the Rule (or Law) of Unintended Consequences, which goes something like this: no matter how much good we think we’re doing for no matter how many people, somewhere along the line someone is going to suffer a negative consequence from all our intended do-gooding, and those people will suffer consequences that we never dreamed of, Horatio.
So, I was not at all surprised that according to a study in the Journal of Food Protection, food handlers who wear gloves – which those of us of a suspicious nature are always ensuring that our sandwich makers are wearing– may actually pass on infections more easily to the people who eat that food than people who handle food with only their bare hands but who wash their hands frequently and thoroughly, which is what you hope all food handlers are always doing, even your mom or spouse.
Apparently, you see, the heat and moisture that accumulate under gloves are a terrific breeding ground for germs, and since gloves are never much more than imperfect barriers to germs, those bacteria can then be more easily transmitted to the food those gloves hands are handling.
One of the more obvious solutions to this problem is to make sure that anyone who touches your food also changes their gloves quite often, although that’s clearly a very hard thing to establish.
So better yet, perhaps: make your own lunch.
