[ithos]

Interesting people freak over salad bars but not about the Chinese Buffets which are very popular. I have eaten at both my entire life and never got sick.

This paranoia is not backed up by government health agencies.

The salad bar is actually much cleaner as no one touches your dishes or silverware.

Do you really think that servers dutifully wash their hands before they set a table or bring out your food after they have bussed a table, coughed into their hands or touched their face?


Per the CDC 2015

The most common cause identified was related to improper cooking with “poor temperature control”, “insufficient time or temperature while cooking or heating”, “improper holding temperatures”, “eating contaminated raw, undercooked or under processed foods”; ‘cross contamination’ or ‘inadequate food preparation causing proliferation of the pathogen’.

I could only find one lawsuit based on a salad bar:

The Milwaukee Health Department has implicated Sizzler as the source of the E. coli outbreak and has narrowed the likely food that contained the deadly bacteria to improperly washed watermelon served from the restaurant's salad bar that likely was cross-contaminated with uncooked ground beef. He tested positive for the deadly bacteria and was hospitalized for five days.