As current news events are showing us, it’s more important than ever to be hygienic. One educator devised an experiment to teach this to her school kids, and even adults have been shocked by the results.

They say that a picture says a thousand words, but what about five pieces of bread in Ziploc bags? Believe it or not, that’s what has shown children and adults alike just how important it is to wash hands.

Most hygienic people wash their hands regularly. But just how many hygienic people are there out there? It’s a worrying question. Just imagine how many unhygienic people you encounter every single day! Well, this experiment is shocking enough to make anyone a hygiene freak.

Jaralee Metcalf works in a school that specializes in teaching students with autism. With a special education teacher, Dayna Robertson, she devised an incredible experiment to show to the school’s children just why they should ALWAYS wash their hands after going to the bathroom or before eating.

So the educators bought a loaf of bread. They took five slices of bread from the loaf and did something different with each one. They kept the first slice untouched by human hands. Then a child with unwashed hands touched the second slice of bread. A child with hands washed with soap and water touched the third slice of bread. A child who had cleaned their hands with hand sanitizer touched the fourth slice of bread. And a child rubbed the fifth slice of bread over some classroom laptops.

Finally, the educators placed the slices of bread into Ziploc bags, careful to avoid cross-contamination. The educators then placed the bread onto a classroom wall for all of the children to see.

Within days, the different slices of bread all started to look very different.

The slice that had a child had wiped over the laptops looked the worst. It was almost entirely green. Nobody would be making toast from that!

The slice that a child with unwashed hands had touched looked almost as bad. More than half of the slice was green and yellow with mold.

The slice that a child had touched with hand sanitizer had a large yellow and green mold spot in one corner. But it was less than half moldy.

The slice that a child with washed hands had touched was almost fine. It was soggy in the middle. But there was no green or yellow mold.

And the untouched piece of bread was completely fine.

Every child in that class had learned a lesson about hygiene that they wouldn’t soon forget. You can bet that they always wash their hands now!

Metcalf then posted the experiment to Facebook, so that the parents of the kids in her school would also get serious about hygiene. (The parents had been sending their kids to school when they were ill, making many others ill too.)

But the post went much further than just the parents of the children at Metcalf’s school. People kept on commenting, reacting and sharing the post. To date, the post has had over 10,000 comments, 20,000 reactions and 70,000 shares. People have been saying things like this:

Thanks to the educators’ experiment, people across the world have now learned an important hygiene lesson. It’s no joke to say that their efforts could save lives!

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Source: Bored Panda