/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>17323766
>unlikely to get sick from a soda machine.
some people are more mold-sensitive than others, i offer some simple advice for avoiding such easily-avoidable food-borne ailments. it's not really a waste of time, just twist the shit off and take a look. i'd encourage people to know and perform this more often when you get drinks from a machine that's self-serve and open to the general public. mold exposure can excite fever and lack of appetite even in small doses. not cleaning a soda fountain or ice machine are the single most common restaurant offenses, trust me. nobody's gonna knock you for checking their oversought work.

another not fancy trick you can do is poke around the drip tray valves under the overflow trays of any soda fountain. they're usually plastic holes that derive from the ice chamber and end in the overflow tray. they exist to expunge melted ice water from the ice chamber above which is of course another mold haven. you will most certainly find black mold on them and you shouldn't find this surprising, but what's more interesting is if you poke a finger or straw up those holes, especially in coke machines, it'll sometimes excrete a white, extra large tablespoon-sized, mucous consistent clump of mold. i've heard the term 'coke snot' thrown around in this industry to refer to the stuff, but have yet to find any concrete information on what the fuck the stuff actually forms from or what it's mostly comprised of. i can't find any good search results on the term and this pic from r*ddit is the closest i can show how it looks. if you can just imagine it's not dyed brown that's what it always looks like.

if you can conceivably throw away your ideas that the general public or people who work for them are to be 'trusted' then you'd probably also be curious about what weird chemistry science experiments you're allowing them to microdose into your body. from my decade long experience in food i'd say no thanks to that sort of negligence tyvm.