"Seinfeld" is etched deeply enough into the cultural landscape that probably most people reading this can recall the episode where a man berates George for "double-dipping" at a party: taking a chip, dipping it, taking a bite and dipping the same chip back into the dip.
The man, Timmy, is horrified. "Did you just double dip that chip?" he asks George. "That’s like putting your whole mouth into the dip!"
George, of course, is unimpressed by the argument.
But a microbiologist and his students at Clemson University set out to discover who was right. Their study, which will be published this year in the Journal of Food Safety, revealed the answer. Timmy, it turns out, was right to be horrified.
The study involved dipping three different crackers into the equivalent of three different types of dip, taking a bite, and then double-dipping.
They found that for an average of three to six double dips, 10,000 bacteria were transferred from the tester’s mouth to the dip.
Professor Paul L. Dawson, who performed the study along with his students as part of a program designed to involve students in experiments, told reporters, "The way I would put it is, before you have some dip at a party, look around and ask yourself, would I be willing to kiss everyone here? Because you don’t know who might be double dipping, and those who do are sharing their saliva with you."