Hand Washing 101

Every year about 76 million people in the United States become ill from pathogens or disease-causing substances in food. Five thousand end up dying from them. By “become ill,” I mean severe diarrhea, fever, vomiting, and abdominal cramps that can last several days.

Guess who is most at risk for food-borne illness? Older adults and people with a weakened immune system are most at risk, in addition to young children and pregnant women and their fetuses.

According to a study on food-handling behaviors in the February 2004 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, the most common cause of cross-contamination between raw meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, and/or unwashed vegetables with ready-to-eat foods was unwashed hands.

So in an effort to dramatically reduce the risk of food poisoning due to bacteria, here is the proper way to wash your hands. It may surprise you!

1. Wash your hands before and after handling raw meat, poultry, fish, produce, or eggs and after using the bathroom, changing diapers, or touching animals.
2. For best results, use warm water to moisten hands, and then add the soap.
3. Wash your hands, vigorously rubbing them together for at least 20 seconds with hot soapy water. It takes that long for the soap and scrubbing to remove some of the germs.
4. When washing your hands thoroughly, you need to wash all the way up to the wrists and over and under fingernails and between fingers (think about surgeons scrubbing on Grey’s Anatomy).
5. If you have an open wound or cut on your hands, you can prevent giving or receiving germs in the area of the wound by wearing rubber gloves when handling food. Wash your gloved hands as you would your bare hands, though, since they can pick up bacteria and cross-contaminate as well.

Source: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Bacteria and food borne illness. NIH Publication No. 07-4730. May 2007.

Anderson JB, et al. A camera’s view of consumer food-handling behaviors. Journal of the American Dietetic Association. February 2004;104(2):186-191.