The Super Bowl is all about chips and dip - so be careful. It could kill you!

If you're a Seinfeld watcher you probably remember this scene:

TIMMY: What are you doing?

GEORGE: What?

TIMMY: Did...did you just double-dip that chip?

GEORGE: Excuse me?

TIMMY: You double-dipped the chip!

GEORGE: "Double-dipped"? What are you talking about?

TIMMY: You dipped the chip. You took a bite. And you dipped again.

GEORGE: So...?

TIMMY: That's like putting your whole mouth right in the dip! From now on, when you take a chip - just take one dip and end it!

GEORGE: Well, I'm sorry, Timmy...but I don't dip that way.

TIMMY: Oh, you don't, huh?

GEORGE: No. You dip the way you want to dip... I'll dip the way I want to dip.

TIMMY: Gimme the chip! Gimme the chip!

And the video:

Timmy is clearly onto something with this. According to research by Judith Trevino, Brad Ballieu, Rachel Yost, Samantha Danna, Genevieve Harris, Jacklyn Dejonckheere , Danielle Dimitroff, Mark Philips from the Deptartment of Food Science & Human Nutrition at Clemson University, "Double-dipping does transfer bacteria: George was wrong!"

I'm imagining doing this experiment right now and giggling to myself. Basically the bacteria levels of each students mouth were measured and then

Each student in the CI team conducted four treatments. For the dipping treatments, a cracker was bitten, dipped in the sterile water then discarded (Figure 1). The control treatments consisted of dipping a cracker without biting. The four treatments were: 3 dips without biting, 6 dips without biting, 3 dips with biting, and 6 dips with biting.

After all the dipping and letting stuff sit around for a while they measured the bacteria levels in the sterile water.

Unsurprisingly they found that

For the "double dipping" experiment, a higher population of bacteria ( P?0.05)was found in solutions dipped with crackers after biting compared to solutions dipped without biting (Figure 3). There was no difference between the 3 and 6 dips (P>0.05) as far a bacteria transferred to the dipping solution. Bacterial populations found in the solution after crackers were dipped without biting were less than 10 cfu per ml of the dipping solution. The results of our research proved that bacteria can be transferred from the mouth to the dip.

If you're interested in more details you can Download the poster right here.

Have a happy and healthy Super Bowl - don't forget to only dip once!

HT:Brian L

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