MetaChat - Why is finding a hair in your food so disgusting?

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25 January 2008

Why is finding a hair in your food so disgusting? →[More:]

Yummy takeout last night wasn't appealing at all after I opened the box and there was a big long hair sitting on top of the food. It totally turned my stomach and I couldn't eat the food.

Why is this so gross? Rationally, I know that the owner of the hair is most likely a clean, decent, nice-smelling person. I know that the food was not significantly contaminated by one little hair. It did not make its way into my mouth (which is disgusting in an actual visceral way and is more understandable).

So why is it so nauseating? God, I'm getting queasy just typing this. Any strategies for preventing the psychological gross-out?

post by: mudpuppie at: 14:45 | 24 comments

I think it's nauseating because it shows that the place is a little less than stringent when it comes to being clean. I'm fine knowing that every restaurant is dirty in some way, but if they can't even keep the filth out of my *food*, what's the rest of the place look like?

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 25 January | 14:49

I've never been all that disgusted by head hair. It falls out, such is life.

But pubes in my food is a whole 'nother matter. That's a lot harder to have happen by accident.

posted by me3dia 25 January | 14:49

I have a physically negative reaction to the thought of getting a piece of hair in my mouth, or caught in my throat. It's an unpleasant feeling.

But otherwise, I'll pick it out and keep eating.

posted by muddgirl 25 January | 14:53

Two reasons:

a) Even if the person who shed the hair is generally super clean, they are probably sweaty and gross from working in a hot kitchen.

b) Seeing a hair in my food brings to mind that icky feeling of having a hair in my mouth that muddgirl referenced.

posted by amro 25 January | 15:08

Yeah, for me it's the icky hair in mouth feeling.

If I visibly find a hair in my food, I pick it out and keep eating, it doesn't gross me out.

If I find out that there's hair in my food by feeling it in my mouth... I ain't going near that plate again. And I'm probably gagging quite nicely.

posted by gaspode 25 January | 15:14

I've read that hair tends to carry a lot of germs, actually. But I'm having trouble finding any particularly reliable links on it (one source is saying that a strand of hair can have up to 50,000 germs, but there's no context for it, so it seems more like a scare statistic than actual information).

posted by occhiblu 25 January | 15:29

OK, further googling is not really turning up convincing links on that one.

But I did find this, about food safety in Victorian England:

Indeed, as Wohl further points out, even luxury items for the relatively well off were hardly any better. The London County Country Medical Officer discovered, for example, the following in samples of ice cream: cocci, bacilli, torulae, cotton fiber, lice, bed bugs, bug's legs, fleas, straw, human hair, and cat and dog hair. Such contaminated ice cream caused diphtheria, scarlet fever, diarrhoea, and enteric fever. "The Privy Council estimated in 1862 that one-fifth of butcher's meat in England and Wales came from animals which were 'considerably diseased' or had died of pleuro-pneumonia, and anthacid or anthracoid diseases."

posted by occhiblu 25 January | 15:34

Cocci? As in tailbones? In ice cream?

posted by mudpuppie 25 January | 15:42

Ah, no, I see now that it's a staph bug.

But I like the tailbones better.

posted by mudpuppie 25 January | 15:42

nah, I think cocci as in gram-positive bacteria.

posted by gaspode 25 January | 15:43

Oh, duh. preview, gaspode, preview!

posted by gaspode 25 January | 15:44

What does "gram-positive" mean, miss doctor lady?

posted by mudpuppie 25 January | 15:50

How do you get rid of unwanted pubic hair?

Use a toothpick!

posted by rumple 25 January | 15:53

As someone that works in kitchens and wears a hat, and as needed a beard net (yes they exist) hair in food is almost unavoidable...

Given that, i just pick it out and keep eating. YMMV...

posted by Schyler523 25 January | 15:55

pups - it's just a general term for types of bacteria that take up a certain stain in the lab. Gram-positive stain, um, bluey purpley and Gram-negative stain reddy pinky. (it's 'cause of their cell walls and um, stuff). Your cocci (staphlococcus, streptococcus, enterococcus) all fall into the gram-positive group.

posted by gaspode 25 January | 15:57

It doesn't much bother me either, so long as I spot it before it enters my mouth. So long as it's short (and, uh, not curly) I don't even mind picking it out of my mouth, but that's probably due to the fact that there's almost always dog fur about the house and we typically eat on the coffee table, which sits pretty low and often has shedding residue on it. I figure even the least cleanly kitchen staff probably aren't rolling around in god-knows-what in my backyard, and if having dog-fur in my mouth doesn't squick me out, human fur shouldn't either, so long as it's head-based.

Long hairs in the mouth are pretty nasty, though.

posted by ufez 25 January | 15:59

Gah. I keep seeing "occ___" and thinking someone is addressing me. Stupid bacteria stealing my name.

posted by occhiblu 25 January | 16:03

One of the things I admire most about you is your gram-positivity, cocchiblu.

posted by mudpuppie 25 January | 16:28

Does that mean that I have a bluey-purpley tailbone?

posted by occhiblu 25 January | 16:35

It is my policy not to comment (OR LOOK AT!) friends' tailbones. So, you're on your own.

posted by mudpuppie 25 January | 16:41

Ha!

posted by occhiblu 25 January | 16:45

I worked in a kitchen one summer. I couldn't eat for most of that summer - all food was gross to me knowing how we handled it. And my kitchen was pretty clean, it was just yaknow... well, a restaurant kitchen. It's not like home, put it that way.

I could only eat fresh strawberries, brie cheese and some brown baked bread that summer. I lived off that alone - one sandwhich for lunch and strawberries for dinner. (and lost lots of weight if you ever wanna go on the brie cheese and strawberries diet, hahaha).

posted by dabitch 25 January | 17:55

posted by dabitch 25 January | 17:56

It is my policy not to comment (OR LOOK AT!) friends' tailbones. So, you're on your own.

And my crush deepens a thousand-fold!

posted by deborah 25 January | 22:35

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