Paella747

...and hopefully they wear gloves whilst doing so......

dulciusexasperis

Manhattan92, please bear in mind that I am trying to be honest and kind in the following comments.

The majority of posters are more or less correct and you are more or less wrong in your beliefs. So I would suggest that you now have to question why you have the beliefs you have in regards to food handlers should all be wearing disposable plastic gloves. Who 'told you' that was what they should be doing?

The problem is that we tend to accept what we are told as 'gospel' when in fact it rarely is. Wearing gloves when handling food can result in just as many pathogens being passed on as not wearing gloves. They CAN be a good thing but are not NECESSARILY a good thing. Just as washing hands and then handling food is better than not washing hands and then handling food.

Here is a reasonable article on the issue. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...=.8d67f4d8397a

Bottom line, both wearing gloves and washing hands are intended to provide proper hygiene for food preparers but neither one is better than the other or excludes doing both or either one properly. In the end, you are reliant on the food preparer doing whatever they do, properly to insure the least risk of you getting sick as a result of eating the food they prepare. Wearing gloves does NOT insure you won't get sick any more than someone washing their hands once does.

By the way, for those who are referring to chefs not using gloves, that simply isn't true. Read the article, many chefs do use gloves as well as washing their hands.

So on a lighter note for Xmas, I am reminded of an old 'war story' from my days as a salesperson. Two guys work for two competing companies. Both are attending a conference in a large hotel in Vegas. They both happen to end up in a public toilet at the same time. Both use the urinals and one finishes first and proceeds to wash his hands. The second one finishes and proceeds towards the exit. The first guy sees an opportunity to get 'one up' on his rival. So he says, 'Huh, I was taught to wash my hands after I take a pee'. The second responds. 'Really,(pause) I was taught not to pee on my hands' and walks out.

arttravel

I think it is a stretch to claim that the Zurich lounge is "unsanitary" because of the lack of gloves on the chefs. Looking for a manager or supervisor so as to inform them that their staff is not meeting your foreign local DOH laws requiring gloves is a bit much. If one saw a chef digging through the garbage and then handling food without washing it would be different.

Would the OP search out a manager at a sushi restaurant in Japan to complain about the lack of gloves? Even CA repealed their law on gloves on sushi chefs, while other areas, like NYC held firm.

freecia

Pasteurization, sterilization, packaging, supply chain management, and shelf life are different around the world, too. For example, much of the world doesn't wash and refrigerate their eggs https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt...e-world-doesnt Ultra High Temperature (UHT) pasteurized milk can be found on the un-refrigerated shelf in Europe https://newrepublic.com/article/1190...ve-environment Both are perfectly safe to consume but not in the expected storage format or location if you're used to US supermarkets.

Did you also wash your hands before eating the tacos or eat them with utensils? The person cutting fruit probably washed their hands while travelers just put theirs all over a plane and high contact places in airports.

I look for a few other sanitization indicators like a clean kitchen, decent refrigeration and proper cooling/heating for items in trays (or rapid turnover). My stomach can usually handle that but not street food with re-used bowls given a token rinse in a cold water bucket or cut fresh fruit placed on ice in places where you can't drink tap water. I have met locals or transplants who can eat those things with no immediate issue, so it is good to figure out what works for you.

If you are a traveling foodie who likes to eat local foods or would like to be, Bourdain's advice here is probably useful https://www.newsweek.com/anthony-bou...et-sick-451642 You can build up your microbiomes and palate. If you're not into widening your food groups, it might still be a good idea to build up your gut microbiome a bit if you travel regularly to places where you won't have a huge choice of restaurants or diet. You will encounter less-than-perfect food sanitization somewhere and having certain gut flora could help you get less sick.

LondonElite

manhattan92

Yes, but I obviously couldn't bring myself to try them. Looked pretty good though.

manhattan92

I neglected to point out that another food server was using gloves at the lounge. So, the hygiene mystery deepens--was the gloved server actually a mole, trying to lure unsuspecting, naive, gloveophile Americans like me into a false sense of food security while he was secretly targeting us with Alpine pathogens? I feel like a pawn, or a prawn in this game of clean vs. evil.

HWGeeks

My aunt owns a resturant in Puerto Rico and she has gloves but doesn't require them. I believe there is a USDA time limit for gloves. 2 or 3 minutes I forget what she told me. Gloves are costly. Soap and water are cheaper.

oh_lol

A food sever has different roles to a chef, so I'm not surprised they have to wear gloves, whereas a chef doesn't.
Seems like you have undiagnosed mysophobia the way you're still carrying on.

manhattan92

It was undiagnosed until Herr Doktor. oh_lol kindly stepped in; I was trying to be funny in my last post; I will make it more obvious for readers like you next time. Please lighten up, it's the festive season.

halls120

This.

sophialite

cfischer

YuropFlyer

I really hope OP is joking. Otherwise, I'd suggest him to stay in his country (without looking I'd bet 100 CHF it's the US..) and never to travel internationally again, ever.

GFrye