Your kitchen towels could be incredibly disgusting
Attention! You might not realize it, but your dish towels
are most likely dirtier than you will ever realize. In a study by Food
Protection Trends, the majority of towels tested positive for coliform
bacteria. That’s right. About 89 percent of those towels carried coliform
bacteria and 25 percent of the batch proved to have E. coli.
Apparently when we’re using and re-using kitchen towels on
pots, pans, dishes and glassware to accelerate drying them off after
hand-washing, we’re introducing a lot of bacteria.
I’m not sure about you, but does it seem that those of us
who operate in kitchens cannot win? Here we’re all trying to do the right thing
by cleaning what we use in our eating areas. What’s the answer? Researchers
with Food Protection Trends recommend frequent replacement of towels or, “decontamination
of kitchen towels.”
What exactly is “decontamination of kitchen towels?” The
answer is to soak your towels in bleach for two minutes to kill as much
bacteria as possible. Yes, soak those towels in bleach because conventional
detergent washing doesn’t do the trick. The
Food Protection folks say that microbial contamination returned to the towels
within 24 hours.
So, should you dip those towels in pure bleach? The people
at Clorox recommend creating a diluted solution for this task. Actually, you
should always dilute your bleach. Use two teaspoons of bleach for each gallon
of water.
I looked into other towel-handling suggestions. According to
the “SheKnows” website, don’t use the same towel to dry dishes and hands; do
not wipe up kitchen counter-tops, sink or where there was meat resting.
Other sites say ditch the kitchen towel and use paper towels
for the majority of wiping up or drying jobs – only use traditional kitchen
towels exclusively to dry off the dishes, pots, pans and utensils.
Beyond your kitchen, those bath towels harbor bacteria as
well. Even worse, you could be using bacteria-laden towels to dry your face. You
ought to wash those towels after three uses and replace your fabric softener in
that load with vinegar, according to the folks over at the University of
Arizona.
So, happy towel decontamination!
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