We all love to eat in restaurants and cafes, but have you ever thought about what you’re actually putting in your mouth? It might be more than you ask for.
A study from the US department of agriculture found in 2018 that people are failing to wash their hands correctly 97 percent of the time. So, even if all of the workers in the catering and food serving business were washing their hands, 97% of them were doing a lousy job. The CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention)  claims that this type of  behavior is the reason for 48 million sicknesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths from food contamination in the U.S. yearly.

Right now, the only way to make sure food handlers are following the rules is to put signs in bathrooms and in kitchens, and inspect the property every once on a while.
That’s where technological development comes in. A company named PathSpot, founded in 2017, developed a hand scanner that gives food-handling workers real-time feedback on the effectiveness of their handwashing. The scanner also collects data, which allows a business to tackle the main problems more efficiently.

how does this product work? The scanner puts out proprietary wavelengths that bounce off of microbes on a person’s hand. The light reflects slightly differently based on whatever it bounces off of, including germs. This feedback is important, as the pilot ongoing program of the company shows. In 20 locations in Detroit, New York City and Durham, North Carolina, the company saw contamination rates decrease by 60 percent over a month after using the scanner.

This solution could revolutionize the food industry, but we must remember that like every other solution, it depends on the people. Only a real behavioral change by the employees and employers could make a difference.