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Blowing out birthday candles makes for bacteria-frosted cakes, study says

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Old traditions die hard so it remains to be seen if a new study that showed that blowing out birthday cake candles makes for germy frosting will change the custom, but it may give some pause.

The research, which was titled “Bacterial Transfer Associated with Blowing Out Candles on a Birthday Cake” and was published in the Journal of Food Research found that there was 1,400 percent more bacteria on the cake’s frosting after “bioaerosols in human breath” were “expelled from the mouth,” compared to cakes that were not subject to said bioaerosols.

The scientists came to the determination after spreading Betty Crocker Rich & Creamy Vanilla Frosting on pieces of foil that were placed on top of circles of Styrofoam. Seventeen candles were then added to the test cakes.

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Each participant was first asked to eat pizza in order to “simulate a birthday party,” said Clemson University food safety professor Paul Dawson in an interview with The Atlantic. “We thought it might help the salivary glands get going,” he said.

And then the scientific fun began.

“The experiment was replicated 3 times on separate days by 11 subjects yielding 33 observations per treatment (blow or no blow),” the study reported. “The effect of blowing vs. not blowing candles out on bacterial counts in the frosting was determined using the proc univariate command of SAS (2010) to obtain mean, median, range and standard deviation. The student’s t-test was also performed and proc glm and pdiff commands were used to determine if significant differences existed between the blowing and non-blowing treatments.”

Sure enough, that seemingly harmless attempt to make a birthday wish come true is actually a “transfer of bacteria and other microorganisms from the respiratory tract of a person blowing out candles to food consumed by others.”

Now before you decide that blowing out birthday cake candles must go the way of double-dipping or that it rises to the level of sneezing without covering one’s mouth, Dawson said the chances of actually getting sick from bacteria-frosted deserts is actually low.

“It’s not a big health concern in my perspective,” he told The Atlantic. “In reality if you did this 100,000 times, then the chance of getting sick would probably be very minimal.”

He did say, however, that if the birthday boy or girl is sick, and they insist on making that wish, cake eaters may want to skip the frosting. Think of the calories you’ll save.

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