Fact Check: Do Cutting Boards Have More Fecal Bacteria Than Toilet Seats?

A comment from a professor of virology seems to have spawned nearly a decade of claims that the average kitchen cutting board contains more fecal bacteria than a toilet. This unusual (and stomach turning) idea has since prompted horrified home chefs to go the extra mile when cleaning their cutting boards, with some even taking to social media to spread the word.

But, is there actually any truth to this claim? Do cutting boards really contain fecal bacteria?

Keep reading as I attempt to separate the facts from fiction when it comes to this gross myth.

This unconfirmed statistic seemingly originated with University of Arizona's Dr. Charles Gerba, after he was cited in a 2014 contributor post to Huffington Post's now defunct blogging platform — something Food & Wine magazine shares it was unable to confirm in a 2024 article about the topic thanks to now-defunct hyperlinks.

The story has since grown legs and seems to be running wild on the internet, prompting many creators to share the statistic alongside their own cutting board cleaning routines.

Instagrammer Miranda Wilson's 2023 post may have been the first one to go viral in response to Dr. Gerba's claims, according to The Daily Dot.

In her caption, she shared the false statistic along with her own claim that fecal bacteria gets onto cutting boards when people use them to cut meat, which can contain fecal bacteria (more on that below).

Not only does this introduce the bacteria to the surface of the board, according to Wilson who is an aesthetic nurse practitioner, but her post goes on to claim that the actual act of using the knife on a cutting board adds tons of little grooves to it, creating the perfect place for this bacteria to take hold, making it next to impossible to remove.

The thought disgusted her and prompted her to share her DIY cleaning routine, which she says sanitizes the board using a mix of sea salt, lemon, and vinegar.

Dr. Gerba, who goes by "Dr. Germ," doubled down on his claims in a 2023 interview with Food & Wine. "In most cases, it's safer to make a salad on a toilet seat than it is to make one on a cutting board," he said at the time. "There are 200 times more fecal bacteria from raw meat on the average cutting board in a home than a toilet seat."

Since then, many social media personalities have also shared this information with their own followers, further spreading the rumor.

For instance, in a video from 2023, TikToker manvir.dosanjh dove deeper into the story, saying that the fecal matter was coming from the organs of the animals, and that the process of cutting them down to prepare a meal was the real way that people were unknowingly spreading it all over the kitchen staple.

One of the reasons why this story is so believable is because store-bought meat does indeed contain fecal matter when it arrives in your kitchen, according to CNN.

In 2019, representatives from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed a lawsuit requesting that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) address concerns regarding fecal matter on raw meat.

An update on the PCRM website says that the USDA refused the request much to the disappointment of the organization.

So despite widespread claims on social media, there doesn't seem to be any hard evidence to support this statistic that cutting boards have more fecal matter than toilets.

Instead, it seems like the real message here is that we should all be doing a more thorough job when we're cleaning our cutting boards after using them to kill the presence of E. coli, which Consumer Reports notes is more likely to be found on wood cutting boards.

To do this, the USDA says cutting boards should be thoroughly cleaned with hot water and dish soap before being rinsed clean and completely dried. To sanitize them, bleach is preferred, with the USDA's website recommending folks use a mix of 1 tablespoon of the unscented variety per each gallon of water.