If you were looking for a reason other than the ridiculous price markup to avoid soda fountains, microbiologists from Hollins University — publishing in the International Journal of Food Microbiology — have got it for you: There’s poo-related bacteria in half of them, the Huffington Post reports, citing blogger Tom Laskawy.

HuffPo pulled this from the study’s abstract:

…Coliform bacteria was detected in 48% of the beverages and 20% had a heterotrophic plate count greater than 500 cfu/ml. […] More than 11% of the beverages analyzed contained Escherichia coli [E. Coli] and over 17% contained Chryseobacterium meningosepticum. Other opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms isolated from the beverages included species of Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia. Most of the identified bacteria showed resistance to one or more of the 11 antibiotics tested.

Good thing there’s a lot of high-fructose corn syrup in there to mask the taste of the nasty stuff.

Bacteria Linked To Feces Found In Nearly Half Of Fast Food Soda Fountains [Huffington Post]

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