This terrifying experiment with a loaf of bread shows why washing your hands is really important

Amid the seemingly endless panic about coronavirus, one topic has overtaken every other narrative: how to wash your hands.

Sanitiser. Soap. Sing "Happy Birthday". Don't touch doorknobs.

It's almost enough to make us wonder whether we ever actually washed our hands properly in the first place... and whether it actually matters.

Turns out that our hands are crawling with germs. And there's proof.

A behavioural specialist who works with autistic children found the perfect (if kind of gross) way to teach kids about the importance of keeping their hands clean.

Jaralee Metcalf and a coworker happened across an experiment which they decided to show the kids, to prove the impact of germs. They took five slices of bread and put them in five different bags in various states of dirty-hand contamination.

One slice was untouched, one was touched with hands that had been washed with soap and water, one with hands that had been cleaned with a hand sanitiser, one with dirty hands and the last slice had been rubbed on the laptops the class uses.

Then, they just waited for the mould to grow.

The results are... Disturbing, to say the least.

While the slices that were untouched or touched with washed hands were pretty much fine, the other three were definitely mouldy, with the one that had touched the laptop absolutely covered in spores.

Metcalf told BuzzFeed that she knew it was gross, but it was still important.

I have an 8-month-old who has gotten sick so much since winter started. Plus, my husband and I are always getting sick, too. It comes with the job to a certain extent, but hand washing is so important in order to stay healthy. I just wanted to send out a friendly reminder to my friends to wash their hands.

Lesson learned for us all.

HT: BuzzFeed