I’m surprised the findings aren’t worse really. One in 20 kebabs infected with nasty bugs in the UK.
But let’s face it: if the 10 pints of cheap beer and chips (erm.. crisps!) the typical kebab shopper has consumed before they’ve suitably damaged their self preservation instinct to utter the drunken “Letsh get a kebab Ihm fukken starvin’” haven’t damaged your health: a kebab with nasty stuff isn’t going to make much difference.
While most were clean, five per cent were discovered to be a potential health risk from salmonella, E.coli, staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus spp.
Given that the article talks of how a greasy kebab contains almost the entire day’s calorie intake for a woman it’s probably best if it does just pass right on through you via food poisoning.
Tips on how to statistically improve your chances of a squirt free kebab:
The researchers found that cucumber, which is handled for chopping, was most likely to be contaminated. Chilli sauce was the biggest risk of the various sauces.
For the Muslims/Jews with their ridiculous pork phobia, it’s quite likely a bunch of them are going to hell:
Also, a number of kebabs do not include the meat claimed. Some sold as Halal and so suitable for Muslims were even found to contain pork, which is banned by the faith.
Given there’s no way to tell if beef is Halal other than if you know it has suffered more by bleeding to death (thousands of years of progress and animals are still essentially sacrificed by throat slitting to appease religion): I’d say a good portion of that would be just whatever beef they could buy cheaply, and thus another ticket to hell.
What makes a good Kebab?
Kebabs for me are like Indian food: it’s not really the taste that’s most important.
What truly matters is if you don’t get sick.
If your stomach doesn’t complain then it’s good. If you have a few stomach gurgles the next day then it’s “okay”. If you eat there a handful of times and your friends who have eaten there also have not been sick AND it tastes ok then it qualifies as a “great kebab”.
That’s really the only criteria that matters with any food that’s traditionally associated with liquefying your insides for days on end. It goes into your stomach already looking like vomit and occasionally comes back up looking the same. Thankfully I battle hardened my stomach in HK and tend to survive dodgy food pretty well. For those who haven’t gone through the bouts of 3-4 days of hellish food poisoning it takes to get a cast iron stomach kebabs are a potential landmine. So the more used to bad food your stomach is: the wider the range of “good kebab shops” there are.
Now I’m sure everyone’s got a “oh but I know a great kebab place”. Sure, when you stumbled there last time you were drunk and the sweaty looking guy managed to slice some half cooked substandard meat resembling spam off an inadequate cooking device and squirt the flavour out of a big squeezy bottle over some chopped tomato and parsley without wiping his nose while you were there: great. Such chef level skill required!
They all generally taste good because there’s typically enough grease in the meat for it to taste good regardless. Case in point: if you let the “juice” (e.g. fat, grease, sauce mix) soak into the wrapping too much you tend to find you’ve started to eat it (sometimes even the aluminium foil). Is it variety that might make a good kebab? Not likely! The thought of offering something “exotic” like sour cream, or avocado is enough to trigger many a dodgy kebab shop a small grease induced heart attack.
What really matters is how well they cleaned their hands, how many years old the meat was (see below for a German story on that!) and how long the stuff’s been sitting there. It shouldn’t matter, but that’s how it works currently.
The dodgy Kebab in the News past
Some other great kebab triumphs:
- 160 people get food poisoning from one Kebab shop
- Aussie snooker ace struggles after bad kebab
- A dodgy kebab turns out to be a baby
- 150 tons of spoiled 4 year old frozen meat thawed out and sold to dodgy kebab makers in Germany
But..
All that said, they do pack a good grease hit and who says you want something healthy after alcohol anyhow? Find one that doesn’t result in the squirts the next day and you’ve got yourself a “good dodgy kebab place”.
