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Americans run on fast food. These are the facts. While it is true the overall percentage of Americans that eat fast food daily is only about 32%, or just under 1/3 of the population, over the course of a week around 85% of Americans eat fast food at least once. Let that sink in for a moment.
Of course, ‘fast food‘ is not a monolith. There are levels to the industry. While I’m not always seeking out an XXL-sized order of french fries and 50 nuggets I will always seek out the grilled chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-a on road trips as a protein hack because an 8-count has 130 calories and 25 grams or protein, but I digress… As someone who was raised in a restaurant family, I am very quick to heed the advice of people in restaurants on what to order and avoid.
Fast Food Workers Say They Avoid These Three Things
Earlier today I was scrolling through one of the million social networks I scroll through and saw someone share a link to a Reddit thread in which McDonald’s workers, and other fast food workers, shared the fast food items they avoid like the plague. Whoever started the thread named it “McDonald’s workers of Reddit, which menu item would you NEVER eat?” and in the 730+ comments there is a consensus on what to avoid.
The top comment on the thread is from someone purporting to be a “former health inspector.” User ‘DopeMasterGenera1’ wrote “former health inspector here, the food is fine. Drink machines and ice chutes at fast food restaurants are where you don’t want to look too hard.”
I’m inclined to question the validity of their health inspector claim because why would a health inspector not look too hard when their entire job exists to find infractions? Alas, they have over 4,000 ‘upvotes’ on the comment and it leads to the Big 3 of Fast Food items that fast food workers avoid.
Those three items are (1) sodas from the fountain machine, (2) ice, and (3) the Filet-o-Fish. Throughout the thread, hundreds of people echo the sentiment that soda machines at fast food restaurants are simply too complicated to clean regularly in the same manner that the rest of the restaurant / kitchen is sterilized.
‘Ice’ is #2 for the same reason as sodas. They come from the soda machines which many fast food workers claim receive less hygienic attention than the rest of the restaurant.
The third item, the Filet-o-Fish, is something several current/former fast food workers claim to avoid due primarily to having seen it stored at various temperatures throughout the process. One redditor, user ‘punkfence‘, wrote “I just knew that you have to cook between 2 and 5 to get the temperatures at 11am, and then they’d sit in the cabinet for hours.”
Is there validity to these claims?
Give than an estimated 85% of Americans eat fast food weekly, if there was a widespread threat from the soda and ice machines, then surely there’d be a paper trail of sickness, right? Well, maybe.
Going back ten years, the BBC ran an investigation titled “Rip Off Britain: Faeces bacteria found on KFC ice.” Then in 2017, the BBC ran a follow-up investigation into 30 McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC locations across the UK. What they found was fecal coliform bacteria present in nearly half of all the machines tested.
So, yeah, fecal bacteria is pretty prevalent in fast food ice machines based on that investigation. Though if you think back to the MythBusters episode where they tested for fecal coliform bacteria on toothbrushes and other items found in the bathroom what we learned from that episode is there is poop on everything everywhere at all times.
And not to only hype up the BBC‘s investigations here, but later in 2017 they ran another investigation testing iced drinks from coffee chains and found fecal bacteria was present throughout, including at the largest chains.
More recently, two years ago Mashed released a video title ‘ Why You Should Avoid Fast Food Ice At All Costs’ and it is quite compelling:
Should you think twice before ordering a fountain soda at a fast food restaurant? Perhaps. You can always opt for a drink inside a plastic bottle. Or you can accept that there is always some inherent risk when eating food prepared by another individual and the reality is that fast food corporations stand to lose a LOT if there is an outbreak of sick customers and tend to have better standards of cleanliness than most family-owned restaurants.
Eat at your own risk.