Should you wash a can before drinking from it?
We wash fruit and vegetables, avoid cutting your cucumber on the same board where raw chicken breast has been sitting, and don’t eat off a dirty floor: we do some things simply because we know they’re more hygienic. But what about soda cans? Why don’t we wash them before slurping them empty? And is that even necessary? We looked into it for you.
By washing our hands 15 times a day, keeping 1.5 metres apart and being required to wear face masks, we’re more concerned than ever with keeping bacteria at a distance. So while drinking my can of cola bought at the supermarket, I realised that it too had travelled quite a journey before ending up on the shelves—and could well be dirty. And research by CBS 11 from 2013 confirms this.
The research
The team examined 20 cans bought from various places, including restaurants, soda machines, petrol stations, universities and supermarkets. And a few of the cans hit the jackpot. For example, they found various bacteria that can cause infections on a can from a restaurant chain and one from a soda machine. The can from the petrol station even contained, um, faecal bacteria.
Washing cans: yes or no?
The key question, of course, is whether this is dangerous and whether you can actually become ill from it. American professor Amesh Adalja, who specialises in infectious diseases, explains. To begin with, he says that faecal bacteria can indeed end up on cans if someone doesn’t wash their hands after using the toilet, and that bacteria from rat and mouse droppings are not inconceivable either. Those little creatures sometimes walk across supermarket shelves or through factories too.
But the answer to the question of whether this will really make you ill is no. Professor Adalja explains that many of these bacteria cannot survive in cold spaces such as refrigerators. In addition, we live in a world where it’s normal to come into contact with countless microorganisms and dirty things. So there’s no need to wash a can before drinking from it, unless it is visibly dirty.
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