Cleaning Up Filthy Fast Food Playlands

How could a playland, a structure so colorful and intended for fun, turn so vile? You'll have to watch the video to see, but Arizona mother of four and developmental psychologist, Erin Carr-Jordan, has launched a campaign on behalf of slide-happy children and their parents. After observing the filthy scene of one McDonald's Playland, she made a slew of complaints to the management before realizing they planned to do nothing about it. She discovered similar scenes at Burger King and Chuck E. Cheese, but bless Chick-Fil-A, they keep their jungle gyms tidy. Turns out there aren't cleanliness laws for play structures at restaurants. Erin recently visited 50 playlands, and sent a batch of samples to a lab for microbial testing. The results were not good. 13 types of pathogens that can cause disease, including fecal contaminates, four strains of staph, and the likely presence of meningitis and gonorrhea. Want fries with that?

Watch Erin's supermom campaign:

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The Daily Byte is a regular column dedicated to covering interesting food news and trends across the country. Click here for previous columns.