Just
when I thought it was safe to come out of my kitchen, I learned a new lesson in
cross contamination. Don’t laugh, but I have always dusted my canned goods a
time or two a month. I didn’t, however, feel the need to sanitize the tops of all the items I purchase.
My sweetie is a very, very gluten intolerant Celiac.
Even the teeniest, tiniest speck will make him extremely sick. The result of
learning this tidbit of information about Rick
has meant revamping how I buy groceries and prepare his food. I also did a major
overhaul of standard items on hand in my pantry and replaced pieces of cooking
equipment and utensils such as wooden spoons and cutting boards which because
of their porous nature might retain a bit of gluten.
I know--we have a bad habit--sipping sodas when
we travel. Never, ever
having had a problem before, we thought nothing of zipping the top right off
and swigging away as we headed off to Columbus, GA Rick began to have his usual
symptoms when confronting a gluten cross contamination situation, starting with
tremendous bloating.
To
make a long day into a short story, he was absolutely miserable the remainder
of the day. But, what in the world could have done this to him? Where could he
have gotten gluten. We had had no breakfast, and his last meal, cooked by me in
our very own kitchen, was more than 12 hours prior. The only thing he had
consumed was about four or five ounces of a 20 ounce diet drink. Okay—cross
contamination at the bottling company or in the plant of one of their vendors—had
to be. These were the only the two possibilities. Right? Read on.
The
first thing we did when we returned home was get on the Internet to look up the
company’s phone number. The customer representative tried her best to be
helpful, taking down all the information, including the control number on the
bottle. She could tell us the date and where the drink was bottled, assuring us
that every ingredient was certified gluten free and that the drink could not
have possibly been contaminated during the manufacturing and bottling process.
Is
it possible? No, I don’t want to go there! Just maybe the person stocking the
cooler had been eating crackers or candy while handling the drink bottles by
their tops. I told you I didn’t want to think about this.
With all the other
possibilities shot down, that is the only scenario that makes sense. The neck
of Rick ’s drink bottle was
contaminated by someone who apparently had not washed their hands. If remnants
of gluten could remain on the neck of a bottle, what else could be lurking on
packaging because of improper hygiene? How gross is that?
Thinking
about what had probably happened, I was the one feeling not so hot. When we put
anything to our lips, whether a drink bottle or a glass of water handed to us
by a server or pour something out of an open jar such as honey or jam or
whatever, how do we know something has not contaminated that rim? I may be
becoming somewhat paranoid, but I have launched my own personal counter attack
against folks who don’t wash their hands before handling my stuff. Everything gets a good going over with disinfecting wipes
prior to use.
Just a little food for thought, so to speak--can we really be too careful?
