AIBU to think open bakery items in M&S are unhygienic?

[Guthealing]

Went to m and s on the way home - it was busy. I was absolutely shocked at the bakery area and then nearer the front of the store a table with unpackaged loaves of bread ?

As it was after school there were children there and I saw 2 touch some of the pastries , people were looking at them talking and breathing all over them and one woman coughed 🤮 the loaves of bread at the other side were being picked up and put down , a child was moving them about, how can this be hygienic??! Why is the bakery area not covered in some way? I usually go to Waitrose and their bakery items are in a cabinet at least. M and s isn’t cheap so why are they not more hygienic!!!!

Anything on lower tables is in paper bags in the M&S I visit

You're talking to the same type of people who used to bang on about 'face nappies' during covid, there's no use appealing to their empathy when they will happily see us immunocompromised folks die just so they can grab a cookie from the shelf and not have to take it out of a bag before stuffing it in their gob.

Yanbu. I don't buy anything from an open bakery. I see people cough into their hands in supermarkets 🤮.

I agree!! I buy from their bakery often and I’m not dead yet.

I know! Awful waste but having been in the queue and seen what the checkout person's hands had handled before my loaf; raw chicken, customers phone to show how to scan their sparks card, cash etc, I decided it wasn't worth the risk. I really do hate waste that's why previously, I didn't want to buy pre-packaged goods.

We have similar concerns re my Dh. It’s quite hard to get wrapped stuff sometimes. Especially at the likes of Starbucks and Nero and Costa etc.

That's probably why they have wrapped loaves and cakes too...give people the choice.

I emailed our government agency tasked with food safety ( not in UK ) about this very topic of baked goods uncovered in shops, supermarkets and garage forecourt shops.
I thought particularly since Covid that our hygiene standards would have risen.
Nope
They weren’t bothered.
The people coughing on baked goods, picking them up and putting them back down, flies and wasps !!!!
No thanks.
I just don’t buy them.

Honestly doesn’t bother me. I’d rather have uncovered bread than bread unnecessarily wrapped in plastic and I’ve never had a problem, even when I was having chemo and I was immunosuppressed, so I can’t find it in myself to care.

Let’s dare them to do it tomorrow! 😄

Same here.

i bought the treacle soda bread from M&S bakery yesterday. I would eat that off a toilet floor, as long as there’s plenty of real butter available. I’m immunosuppressed too but much better than I used to be

Yes, and everywhere else that leaves unwrapped food on counters with customers spit landing on them as they order directly over or in front of them. It's vomit inducing. If I owned a bakery/eatery, I'd have everything behind glass.

It's the same issue with those stick stirrers you can pick out in cafés, and any cutlery come to that.

I buy it! But I’m from a very decent area and they bake early. Never seen dc touch anything. In fact rarely see dc on the shop. Mostly well off retired folk. We know how to behave. I’m still here! No one worries about the icecream van man holding the cornets or chefs assembling food by hand.

Same!
I’m not sure if I’m not ill a lot because I don’t shy away too much from germs or I don’t shy away from germs too much because I’m not ill very often though.

I once saw a young kid sticking his fingers in the pastries along the lower shelves in M&S - it definitely put me off!

I don’t buy from anywhere that sells it open - food markets are not for me either!!

Lidl are the same, l only buy when l can see one of the bakery staff putting fresh stuff at the back, then l use the tongs to get one from the back. I am presuming the bakery staff practice good hygiene.

Absolutely this.

I can’t imagine how on earth it’s allowed.

I just can’t bear the thought that people might have coughed and sneezed over food that I eat. As for kids handling food then putting it back - 🤢

Yeah I get that. I’m probably a bit salty at the minute after people banging on elsewhere about how to improve my immune system when I can’t
I get told to eat fermented foods (not allowed), plenty of raw fruit and veg (also not allowed) and to take probiotics (you guessed it…)

on the odd occasion I’ve been in one I’m always put off by how messy and unappetising the display looks.

I think if people could see what goes on behind the scenes when food is being prepared, they would think twice about eating anything they couldn't wash and cook themselves.

Ha, being open on display isn't great - but their staff at the checkout bad too. She took the items out of my paper bag to see what they were, despite there being a little window in the bag. Told her I didn't want them anymore (she handled money) and complained to head office.
I just realised that makes me so Victor Meldrew.

Since covid, I no longer buy any unwrapped bakery items apart from the actual bakery where only staff have access.

Yep, this happened in my local M&S - a loaf of bread knocked on the floor and casually dropped back on the pile 🤮 This M&S is a flagship store yet it has piles of baked goods on tables with everyone pushing past as the tables are right by a major entrance. I couldn’t believe it when I first saw it. The bread and pastries were piled up on tables with people pushing up against them, handling them (and knocking them on the floor) just like the tables of books in Waterstones - except I don’t eat books.

Aren’t there bakery items in baskets at the back of the shops all the time? Lidl seems the exception having them on covered (but open) shelves. Can’t say I’d get worked up about it, though if I saw kids pawing then I’d not buy that particular loaf.