Concerns for the health safety of our consumers 

The FDA reports that Foodborne illness is a major public health concern in the United States. Foodborne diseases cause 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths each year. While these numbers are staggering, the cases are slowly increasing. In the past few years, many food service workers have started using gloves and safety gloves to prevent knife cuts. It is definitely an issue that may easily be solved or prevented with standard that may be applied by wearing a food safety mask. While hair nets, hats, and chef hats have been long used, one particular area has not been a concern for most restaurants and food service companies. That area of concern is our mouth. 

In Asia, most of those first world countries have been using face or mouth masks in the past 2-3 decades. This is a safety concern for the customers and consumers of their food that is being prepped or produced. Germs from the food service worker may easily be contracted to the food that he/she is working with. In the worst case scenario, the worker may be sick and not know it, which can easily be spread to the food. Kitchen workers prep and serve hundreds if not thousands of food to consumers on a daily basis and if the worker is not taking any prevention to spread disease from their mouth, then it can possibly spread to the consumers. 

Why wear a kitchen mask?

 This is why food mask is a solution to a preventable issue such as the spread of germs. Wearing a restaurant mask not only stops the germs from going into the food, but into their surroundings as well. Nowadays, the interior architecture of restaurants have been changing to open kitchens and the healthy food trend has been opening a lot of "build your own plate" type of meals. With these type of "build your on meals" will always have food that is left open for display and ready to be plated. While workers do wear gloves, it is also important to cover the mouth in order to prevent germs from landing on the food.