The restaurant business is a dangerous one.
The recent E. coli outbreak linked to Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. has affected 39 customers and counting in Washington and Oregon. State health inspectors have reported that the people who were affected by the outbreak ate at several different Chipotle locations before getting sick. The outbreak is now raising questions and concerns on how food is handled in restaurants and the importance of restaurant tidiness. How well do you trust your food in the hands of others? Cross-contamination? Poor sanitation in the kitchen? A server’s poor personal hygiene? Dirty bathrooms?
I’ve had my fair share of food poisoning and bad experiences with restaurants.
The thought of someone handling my food is a bit frightening to me, especially if the environment doesn’t appear to be tidy. A couple of years ago, I dined at a restaurant in New Orleans after reading Yelp reviews and hearing positive feedback from the hotel employees. Upon our arrival, we noticed the floors were sticky, as if we were walking in a pool of syrup. The kitchen door was wide open, exposing the kitchen to customers. Shortly after, I decided to use the bathroom and noticed gunk in between the tiles and hair on the floor. My short experience at the restaurant made me wonder how my food would have been handled, if the kitchen utensils were properly washed, about the hygiene of the cook. Based on the grimy bathroom it was obviously that hygiene was not a priority to the restaurant owners and employees.
Maybe I’m the only one who takes the atmosphere, hygiene and health inspection scores into consideration, but with the vast increase in foodborne illness, it’s not a bad decision to start trying.
Each year, one-in-four citizens suffers from a foodborne illness. Food poisoning in restaurants can result in symptoms which range from vomiting, nausea and even death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 76 million people suffer from foodborne disease annually; 325,000 of them are hospitalized and 5,000 die. In order to prevent foodborne illness in the restaurant industry, states have safety and health regulations established which govern restaurants and other food establishments. These rules are strictly enforced by health inspectors.
Restaurants in each state are mandated by the health department and health inspections are conducted yearly. The Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) is based on an A-C grading scale: A, meaning no critical violations noted; B, critical violations were reported during inspection but were corrected during supervision; and C, critical violations had not been corrected and the facility has to be re-inspected. If violations are not fixed within 10 days the facility’s permit can be suspended.
Inspection reports on your local restaurants are available to the public on the MSDH website. Do your research on your local restaurants, trust me, you’ll be surprised.
Some things to look out for if the thought of getting food poisoning scares you: how the restaurant appears, how raw meat or fish is handled, if cloths are dirty and used on different surfaces, or if the food smells off. It doesn’t hurt to be vigilant.
Ethel Mwedziwendira is a sophomore journalism major from McKinney, Texas.
