Does hair in food carry any health risks?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

Say I go to a restaurant and find a hair in my food. Are there any actual health risks?

Does it make a difference if I:

Find it in the dish, remove it, and keep eating
Take a bite, find it in my mouth, and remove it
Ingest it

This was inspired by a recent news story about a certain authoritarian butthole cosplaying as a food service worker. I did try to look it up (er, search it up?), but the top hits were lengthy meandering articles, or totally off-topic stuff like foods to prevent hair loss. So naturally I gave up and opted to consult the hive mind instead.

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Comments

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BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
From a technical perspective, yes, there could be health risks from hair in your food. There may be chemicals in the hair from various hair products or there could be bacterial contamination, though that’s a low risk unless you’re consuming a lot of hair that hadn’t been cooked.

In reality, it’s unlikely a few hairs are going to cause any sort of issue other than texture/mouth feel.

That being said, Trump’s hair could be made from asbestos for all we know. That shit doesn’t look natural at all.

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- FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Fungal infections as well!
  
  But yes, there is a risk, even if it’s not as bad as unwashed hands or using contaminated equipment (knife on raw chicken to veggies, etc,) or generally unsafe food handling (thawing peas and just letting them sit.)
  
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rimu@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It's not so much the hair itself as it being a symptom of god knows what else.

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KeepFlying@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
A lot of food safety laws are built around the highest levels of safety because you never know how vulnerable one of your patrons might be. I have no idea about the actual health impacts but based on that I assume it’s another minor vector for foodbourne illness that alone has a really small impact.

I’m more worried about what it means about the rest of the kitchen’s cleanliness. Hairnets/hats are easy, so if they can’t do that then what else are they forgetting?

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- rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  It’s the “remove all brown m&m’s” rider of food service
  
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  - dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    honestly I think it is less about health or safety and more about the disgust people feel - it really might just be irrational and nothing more
    
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jeffw@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I doubt it, unless for some reason you eat a large quantity of it.

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rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Nah, it’s just the ick factor. Dirty hands can definitely contaminate food but the occasional hair won’t. Sure is gross, tho.

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