I can identify the exact moment when my relationship with birthday cake changed forever, and it was last week, when I read a study titled “Bacterial Transfer Associated with Blowing Out Candles on a Birthday Cake.”
Of course, the more cautious (aka germophobic) among us have already thought about it in gruesome detail.
I’ve consumed countless slices of sheet cake finely misted with spit and suffered no particular consequences—and yet, the thought of eating another now sent visceral disgust through my body.
To simplify things for the study, Dawson and his students dispensed with an actual cake and frosted a piece of foil atop a cake-shaped styrofoam base.
Oh actually, they did something before blowing out the candles: They ate pizza.
“You have one or two people who really for whatever reason ... transfer a lot of bacteria.”
The team diluted the frosting with sterile water and spread it out on agar plates for bacteria to grow. »