Basic food hygiene?

Septimia

If you watch some cookery programmes you can see that chefs and other staff in the kitchens of posh restaurants frequently put the food on plates with their bare hands. They might wash their hands but there's no guarantee that they haven't just touched something accidentally. It rather puts me off...

They might also touch something unclean accidently if they were wearing gloves!

Frequent handwashing should be sufficient if other basic rules are followed:
wash hands after using the toilet, or blowing your nose, do not make food for others if you have a cut on a finger without wearing gloves, if indeed you even are allowed to work.
Never use the same chopping board and knife for vegetables and for meat, or fish.
Never use food that has fallen onto the floor, except raw vegetables that are to be boiled. These can safely be rinsed in cold water before boiling.
If you need to sneeze or cough, step away from the food you are preparing and turn you head away, and cover your nose and mouth. Then wash hands.
Utensils such as knives or spoons that fall on the floor should be washed before reuse.

I myself consider it more important that kitchen staff were head coverings than gloves, as I dislike hairs in my food.

ExDancer

Gloves ate just as likely to be as unhygenic as hands.
Surely once you have picked something up something like meat in your gloved hands you will have contaminated the gloves, and so you should then wash the gloves before you touch anything else.
So it makes no difference.
Just keep washing your hands.

One of my dad’s carers wore the same gloves from the previous his client 😩
I pushed a box of gloves under his nose, said there was plenty to go at.
He didn’t seem offended at all.

I’ve seen people prepare a sandwich, using gloves, but then go on to take the money wearing the same gloves 😩

Have to point out here that staff are far more likely to wash hands inbetween differing foodstuffs bare handed than they are wearing gloves... gloves give a false sense of security, are a total faff to keep taking off , throwing away and replacing with a fresh pair every single time you change the type of food you are handling, so bare handwashing practices are overall far safer, easier for staff to handle and remember and cheaper ( not to mention better for the environment)

Fancythat so a new pair of gloves every time a food item is touched? Quicker, easier and more environmentally friendly to wash hands when necessary, surely.

I would think gloves protect the wearer but otherwise are just as likely to cross contaminate as bare hands. Or maybe worse as they give an impression of cleanliness..i mean who handwashes with the gloves on?
Mac Donalds are not daft so i am sure there must be a policy.

MibsXX

Have to point out here that staff are far more likely to wash hands inbetween differing foodstuffs bare handed than they are wearing gloves... gloves give a false sense of security, are a total faff to keep taking off , throwing away and replacing with a fresh pair every single time you change the type of food you are handling, so bare handwashing practices are overall far safer, easier for staff to handle and remember and cheaper ( not to mention better for the environment)

I agree with that, plenty of hand washing & hand sanitizer. Plus, I hate the smell of rubber gloves.
Once I even had the tip of someone’s blue glove in my sandwich.

Grannynannywanny

I enjoy watching Saturday Morning Kitchen most weekends but I’m often surprised at the lack of hand hygiene from top chefs, many of them Michelin star restaurant owners.

This morning Theo Randall cooked veal chops. He prepared the raw chops on a board using his bare hands. Removed the chops from the pan and sliced and preened them with his unwashed hands which had been massaging raw meat a few mins earlier. Not once during the entire process did he wash his hands. He did wipe them in a tea towel which he then tossed onto the worktop while the chops were cooking 🤢

The food was then served up to the celebrity guests.

I hate it when cooks/chefs put the tea towel over their shoulder.

As a former school cook, we never used plastic gloves, unless we had an open wound or rash on our hands, but we were scrupulously clean washing our hands, there is absolutely no reason why gloved hands would be better if proper hygiene is followed, you could just as easily use the bathroom, cough into your hand wipe/blow your nose, handle raw meat then cooked products etc with your gloves on as you can without

Interesting conversation as we had gone to our Morrisons yesterday. At the fish counter the assistant was wearing gloves. However just as my OH was pointing to the salmon, the assistant proceeded to move around some seafood in its container asking "do you want this?" Oh no! It's the marinated salmon next to it that we were pointing at. I then politely requested him to change his gloves, which he was ok with as I explained that he'd been handling seafood that we would never touch.

Mt61 You beat me to it was going to say exactly the same think
Personally clean hands are the way to go

Why would food service staff wearing gloves be a guarantee of food hygiene?

Mt61’s comment about tea towels slung over the chef’s shoulder reminded me of my late aunt-in-law. She was a school cook all her life, trained at the Glasgow Dough School and she hated to see tea towels slung over a shoulder. Very unhygienic, she said. On the rare occasion that I might do it, I quickly undo it, as I can hear her telling me off in my head!

I went into a lovely chocolate shop in Italy recently (they also sold ice cream). You had to put the money into the till on the customer side of the shop - it also dispensed the change. So the shop staff’s hands were not contaminated by handling money, cards, etc.