What does it matter if we touched the bread when every one is using the same knife to cut it?
I was at a funky little cafe on Friday in another town. One of the things they featured were about 4 different loaves of different types of home made bread. They were at the salad bar and people needed to cut their own slice of bread off the loaf.
There was a sign that read, “Please do not touch the loaves of bread with your bare hands. Please use the bread fork and bread knife provided.”
Well, if someone is sick and they haven’t washed their hands, they’ll get germs all over the bread fork and knife any way, so what’s the difference?
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
26 Answers
People don’t think that far ahead. The assumption is that hands will never touch the surfaces of the areas on the utensils which contact the bread.
It’s all about the clientele. They must think they are only serving the upper crust.
@stanleybmanly but you still have the germs on your hands which you then use to pick up your slice of bread.
I’m not too squeamish about food and food prep, but I know that there are a lot of people out there who don’t wash their hands when they’re done using the bathroom. I have never seen a place where they had a big loaf and a knife and bread fork. I’ve been to places where, at a buffet or salad bar, they will have bread sliced and a set of tongs, and you use the tongs to take a slice or however much you want. I don’t think I would appreciate seeing some guy with his hands all over the bread that I was hoping to eat.
Well they did. They had 4 loaves of bread at end of the salad bar and customers sliced their own slices.
My point is those germy hands handle the handle of the fork and the knife and you use the knife and get all those germs on your hand and then they get on your piece of bread when you pick it up!
So your averson to seeing some one putting their hand on the loaf of bread is simply psychological because you’re coming into contact with the feared germs any way.
^^^^ Having said that I wpuld not care if someone put their hand on the loaf to steady it while they cut it. I’d still get me some. It was REALLY good bread! This place featured German / American cuisine. I got a sandwich, but next time I’m just going with the bread! And a salad. And then some more bread. It was super good.
No major difference if you don’t clean your hands before actually eating the bread. If you do clean your hands then it makes a difference.
At buffets there is still a lot of “risk” though. Although, reducing the amount of virus does make a difference. On cruise ships (at lease some of them) they don’t let customers touch anything the first 2 days, and after that they expect you to use Purell before you enter the buffet line. Even in Golden Corral here is Purell by the dishes and some other choice places.
It doesn’t matter if you wash your hands before you actually eat eat the bread. The instant you grabbed the handle of the knife or the fork you got previous people’s germs on your hand. Do you rush off to the bathroom to wash your hands before you pick up the slice of bread you just cut?
@Dutchess_lll If you get back to the table and use a sanitizing wet wipe you reduce the transmission of germs. Sometimes I bother to do it if I will be eating with my hands.
So what do you do immediately after you’ve cut your slice of bread and before you get back to the table?
I don’t do anything. I am not touching the food. My flatware is either at the table, or it is laying on my tray. It’s imperfect for sure, but you can reduce the germ spread if you obsess about it enough.
What do you mean you don’t do anything? You do pick up the piece of bread you just sliced off of the loaf to put it on your plate don’t you?
@Dutchess_lll In the above answer, I would use the fork supplied to place the bread on the plate and then wipe my hands at the table before touching anything else. I carry hand wipes with me at all times.
This is why a lot of people don’t eat at buffets. Whether it’s a health issue or not, the thought of people’s pissy hands possibly touching their food just grosses them out.
If I’m being neurotic about it I would pick up the food with my left hand. I’m holding the bread with my left hand to slice it in the first place most likely.
At a buffet I usually don’t obsess about it, because if you’re going to obsess, it’s better to just not bother going to a buffet.
Touching the food in that situation mostly just “looks” bad. It’s bad etiquette.
Regular restaurants it’s pretty bad also, especially if servers are busing tables also and handling credit cards and cash.
Why your left hand?
I think we could all drive ourselves absolutely insane thinking about all the minute ways we could pick up some stray germ. My solution is to be reasonably clean and not worry about it.
It always confuses me when restaurants will slice a loaf but not clear through. The bread basket is passed and everyone takes turns grabbing the loaf to wrestle off their “cuts”. I agree that there’s little point to extreme measures if you are sharing communal meals. The risks from respiratory pathogens are astronomically higher than anything likely to be derived from dirty hands. I guess the big “dirty hand” risk these days is hepatitis.”
@Dutchess_III The knife is in my right, and my piece of bread is being held by my left to steady the loaf of it needs steadying. My right hand is the one touching all the handles of all the serving utensils.
Of course, a fork could be used also to steady the bread, but my fork might be back at the table.
Well, of course we do it that way at home, cutting up our own loaves of bread. I just couldn’t figure out what you would specify that in a conversation where the bread in question is at a restaurant and it’s already been determined we are not to touch it.
@stanleybmanly I’m pretty sure hep is transmitted through body fluids, kind of like AIDs. I don’t know that you can get hep from someone’s dirty hands.
Hep A is absolutely from unwashed hands. The route is fecal to mouth.
When restaurants have a Hep A breakout usually a lot of people get infected. One set of infected hands can infect a lot of the customers.
Hep B and Hep C are from blood similar to HIV, not from ingesting it.
About the bread, you are asking what’s the difference if you touch the bread. If you touch it with your clean hand, the left in my case, you are not moving germs from the knife to the bread.
In a Dunkin Donuts in the city I used to work in, there was a Hepatitis A scare in 2010. (You can google Peekskill Dunkin Donuts Hepatitis). Even though the food service people wore gloves, a maintenance man took some ice from the ice machine in a cup, and in doing so, transmitted Hepatitis A to the ice. The ice was given out to customers in their drinks and transmitted to them.
That’s wild. Now, how did the know he had hep, and how did they know that he was ground zero for the outbreak?
@Dutchess_III: Health Dept probably made all the workers get tested.
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
