By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

We've all read and I have previously written some of the horror stories about what's happening to the rain forests being converted to beef ranches in our zeal to get yet more and bigger Big Macs packed onto our ever expanding waistlines and corporate bottom lines.

I've also written about a dozen good reasons not to drink soda, not that switching to bottled water is any any better (I've written about that as well). But here are about a billion more reasons not to drink soda—at least not at your favorite fast food emporium, especially if you can't resist all those unlimited refills and supersized cups they give you.

A recent study by scientists at Hollins University and published by the International Journal of Food Microbiology now reveals that 48% of the beverages dispensed contained fecal bacteria, including Coliform and E. coli (11%).

Better yet, these particular forms of bacteria are now antibiotic-resistant, again thanks to those big cattle ranches.

How, you might well be wondering, enroute to the nearest regurgitory repository, having just guzzled a gallon of this stuff, did all this crap, literally speaking, turn up in your soda?

Well, maybe it has something to do with all those sullen teens being forced to work for minimum wages in order to pay for that astronomical auto insurance. Not to mention those borderline homeless working in the sculleries of all those fast food emporiums, brimming with resentment as they give a rudimentary and resentfully minimum swipe on the floor with their filthy rags and mops in all those public restrooms they've been hired to “clean.”

Here's a question for the readers out there: how many of you actually wash your hands with soap and hot water after using a public restroom? And more to the point, how many of those sullen teens and resentful minimum wage workers have you seen scrubbing their hands with soap and hot water after using those facilities before hurrying back to the kitchen to fill your latest order of fries or clean the counters?

These are the same workers who are responsible for cleaning those soda machines, for connecting the hoses to the kegs, and other sanitation-challenged tasks. And they aren't doing such a great job, perhaps in part because they are not exactly highly motivated to do so, for $6 an hour, or whatever minimum wage they are getting, with no health insurance for when they themselves inevitably get sick.

The good news is that this stuff (which, by the way, is also in our drinking water, in legally limited quantities) rarely makes anybody very sick. Well, maybe a little. Do you feel queasy now? And maybe you did last time you had fast food. No one is really keeping track, unless people start to die in large numbers. Even then, the corporate lawyers will no doubt insist it's an un-provable coincidence.

Here's an idea: don't eat or drink any of this stuff. Ever. It will save your waistline, your intestinal linings, and bottom line. It might even help save the planet.

Sources:

International Journal of Food Microbiology

Tom Laskawy, of Grist.com

Treehugger.com

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His newest book is “Inside the New China: an Ethnographic Memoir.” He can also be found at: www.geneayres.org.