Hair in your food?

Hi all, welcome to what's around us, hope you got enough information about the brain development in adolescent age group. Today's article is not just oriented to adolescents but for all of us. I feel very bad if I see my hairs coming out of my scalp into my hair brush. Yes, of course hair fall is common for all the menstruating females and even for men after certain age. The reason for hair fall can be plenty but what happens if the hairs are falling on to your food?

I feel very awkward if I see any hairs fallen onto my platter. That would the most irritating task to manage to take the hair out of my food. I hope everyone of us have faced this. So we think that the moment ae take the hair out of the food is safe for us to eat but I say no.. Just look into this image

Growth of microbes on a fallen hair strand

Photos from CFTRI, Mysore Exhibition 2018

When the hair falls from the scalp and meets a suitable medium, becomes a niche (micro-habitat) for the microbes to colonise. Suitable medium may not be the agarose gel all the time, even our food acts as medium for the microbes. There are plenty of atmospheric microbes like Staphylococcal bacteria, which are harmful for us in many ways. Below are some pictures showing the growth of microbes in human hand print, dead insect, human nail, human hair strand and cloth piece. Next two cultures shows the colonies of bacteria, and fungii.

Culture mediums showing the colonies of microbes

Photos from CFTRI, Mysore Exhibition 2018

I think now you got an idea of what the microscopic creatures can spoil our quality food; Hence one should always be very careful on what we eat. Hair fall for females is obvious things but its better to tie them neatly or cover it up with a hat while cooking or serving food, its not just for females alone but even for males. Not just the fallen hair, its good to maintain  a proper hygiene in the food we eat. Nail, hair, cloth pieces, insects are the common things which flies in the air and may end up landing on our food. Most of the microbes can be heat killed, and a single strand of hair cannot show the considerable infection but consumption of a clump of hairs will do. The hair is made of a protein called as keratin, which cannot be easily digested in our gastrointestinal tract; the small amount of hair can be remain with other undigested food and gets eliminated with stools. 

So that's it for the day, see you next week with another exciting article. Till then keep reading 'What's around us' 

My special thanks to CFTRI Mysore, India