Don't Be Down And Dirty

Most people believe they take the proper precautions when handling food. But when researchers brought cameras into the kitchens of ordinary Americans, they caught plenty of serious safety mistakes on tape.

Dr. Tom Shuster, of the University of Utah, put 100 cameras into 100 homes.

"We wanted to be able to observe directly what people are doing in the kitchen," Shuster told CBS News Early Show Anchor Bryant Gumbel. "We brought in food to a consumer, had them prepare a number of different recipes. Then we took the tapes back to our offices and looked at them."

One of the women they observed didn't do a good job washing some utensils -– even though she wore rubber gloves.

"You see there's no soap involved there," explained Shuster.
"One of the things you have to do, you soap, scrub those things. And that woman, even though she had gloves on, she was thinking of protecting herself, she wasn't being effective in the way she was washing those utensils."

Another woman they watched was making meat loaf. After she touched raw meat "she just went back and rinsed her hand a little bit in the sink and wiped it on that towel. And that towel is a thing we really have a problem with."

"She had raw meat and put it right on the towel and all throughout the rest of her cooking experience, she's using that towel to wipe her hands." That means germs from the raw meat will be spread around the rest of the food and the kitchen.

Another woman incorrectly wiped up her kitchen counter.

"When you clean a surface, you should wash it with hot, soapy water."

Bryant Gumbel was resistant to this idea, but Shuster was adamant about it.

People need to use "hot, soapy water, particularly when it's been in contact with any kind of meat in order to kill the microbes there and in order to take care of any problems," said Shuster. "You really need to wash that down thoroughly. We found most people were just wiping it, again, with that kitchen towel."

One of the worst things they saw was in the area of hand-washing.

"Just about everything you could do with that, people did wrong. They did not wash their hands frequently enough."

Shuster says people should wash their hands after petting a dog or touching their nose.

The three main tips they're advising people to follow are:

• wash your hands frequently with soap and water.
  
• clean your surfaces with hot, soapy water.
  
• wash kitchen towels frequently or use paper towels.

Shuster laims that he has changed his habits as a result of seeing the kitchen tapes.

"In fact, everybody involved in this study has done that. So we really have made some changes, and we want consumers…to just take a few precautions."