Now is the time of year -- Super Bowl, Valentine's Day -- when fondue and dips come into your life more often. And with the act of smothering something in cheese comes the inevitable debate about the propriety of double dipping.
For a classic example of this argument, Fat City presents Exhibit A, wherein Seinfeld character George Costanza demonstrates how some people consider revisiting the dip bowl the ultimate party foul. If you're like George, Fat City has a few answers to your hypothetical etiquette questions.
What if I use the other end of something I've bitten, like the untouched end of a carrot.
This is essentially the chopsticks argument -- where you're suggesting you use the thicker end rather than the pincers which you've used to pick up food. But once food has come within the vicinity of your mouth, it should be considered out of bounds and no longer in play.
What if my chip breaks? Can I then re-dip with the remaining portion of my chip?
Nope, leave the chip behind and move on to the seven-layer dip. You, like Indiana Jones with the Holy Grail, have to let it go, Junior.
I'm with my family, we're meant to share. Besides, double dipping doesn't hurt anybody, right?
Here, we'll use science, in an attempt to gross you out and make you realize that even your family shouldn't share everything. A 2008 study in the Journal of Food Safety showed that if you double-dip just three to six times into the same bowl, you'll have managed to transfer approximately 10,000 bacteria from your mouth to that bowl. That's 50 to 100 bacteria per bite of contaminated chip.
But Fat City, surely there must be some acceptable instances for double dipping.
There are, in fact, two scenarios where you can double dip with abandon. The first is when one is eating Fun Dip -- a colored sugar powder eaten via a candy stick -- which by design requires you to double dip. The second is if you intend to eat an entire container of dip by yourself -- although in this scenario, double dipping is perhaps the least of your worries.
[Image via Flickr: alishav]
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