I first heard about this on 97.1 zht and unfortunately, I am now unable to enjoy a diet coke with lemon whenever I go out to eat.
The Salt Lake City health department reports that when you order that side of lemon, you are often squeezing more than just lemon juice into your drink - more like germs. Everything from fecal bacteria to the germs that cause staff infections were found on lemons tested throughout the state.
Bare-hand contact with ready to eat foods (such as lemons) and neglecting hand-washing both constitute health code violations for employees, but those may be some of the possible sources of the germs. Another possible source of contamination could be from the actual rind of the lemon; if they were not washed, they could have been contaminated long before the restaurant received them.
Well, that’s enough to make me lose my cookies. No more lemons for me! Or limes…I’m guessing it’s probably the same story.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Yuck! // Feb 20, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Oh My! That is just nasty! Let’s just hope that the all the grossness if from the lemon itself and not employees not washing their hands. Either way it is gross. Sick, sick, sick. Good thing I never take my drinks with citrus.
2 Pernell // Feb 20, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Yeah, hopefully it is from the lemon - I mean, if it’s just from the workers’ hands then everything else we get could possibly have “fecal bacteria” as well, right - I think every day should be fast sunday…
3 Jen // Feb 26, 2008 at 10:31 am
Oh no!!! I love lemons (and better yet - limes!) in my Diet Coke…how can I ever have that again? Gross!!
4 jane smith // Feb 27, 2008 at 10:31 am
This doesn’t come as that big of a surprise…I can only imagine all the other health code violations that go on in the food industry that we don’t know about.
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