Why cake shields could be the next big party trend - Mashed

Kay isn't the first person to point out the yuck factor that he sees when anyone blows out birthday candles. Paul Dawson, professor of food safety at Clemson University, actually put together a research paper on the subject, which was published in the Journal of Food Research and titled "Bacterial Transfer Associated with Blowing Out Candles on a Birthday Cake." The results surprised him.

In some cases, blowing out candles saw the number of bacteria on a cake increase by 14 times while in another instance, the amount grew by more than 120 times. "Some people blow on the cake and they don't transfer any bacteria. Whereas you have one or two people who really for whatever reason ... transfer a lot of bacteria," Dawson told The Atlantic in 2017. At the time, Dawson dismissed the risk involved in blowing out birthday candles, saying, "It's not a big health concern in my perspective. In reality, if you did this 100,000 times, then the chance of getting sick would probably be very minimal." Atlantic contributor Sarah Zhang suggested a cake shield might look ludicrous.

Let's block ads! (Why?)