This is the horrifying truth about your tea towels

There are loads of terrible and horrible and scary things in your kitchen, just itching to dive down your throat and dissolve your stomach to murder you absolutely dead. It’s almost not worth going in there at all. This is my excuse for only eating crisps for dinner - it has been for the past ten years and it will be, until I eventually die of something like eating too many crisps. At least I didn’t die from inadvertently sucking the juice from a raw chicken breast tomorrow though!

• While you're having a spruce up in the kitchen, check out our best kettles review

Or, a tea towel. Yep, it turns out that tea towels - your humble, friendly kitchen servant - are actually serial killers that will wrap their evil fingers around your life blood and extinguish it without a second thought.

Scientists from the University of Mauritius examined 100 towels that had been used for a month, and they found a horrendous slice of info at the end of it: your tea towels are assassins.

Essentially, E.coli is hanging out on all your fancy chequered towels, and you’re going to die a screaming death unless you take appropriate steps. It was found rife on damp towels, and was more prevalent in houses where meat was eaten.

The research, which is being presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Atlanta, suggests that you should wash or change your towels, oven gloves and sponges regularly to stop cross-contamination and a shrieking, painful demise in the middle of your kitchen in front of your horrified family members.

Scientists examined the towels and found that 49% of them had bacterial growth, which increased in number with bigger families and the presence of children. Out of the contaminated group, 36.7% grew coliform bacteria, which is a group which includes E.coli (some E.coli is harmless, but others will basically rip your stomach out).

Lead author Dr Susheela Biranjia-Hurdoyal said:

“The data indicated that unhygienic practices while handling non-vegetarian food could be common in the kitchen.

“Humid towels and multipurpose usage of kitchen towels should be discouraged. Bigger families with children and elderly members should be especially vigilant to hygiene in the kitchen.”

Basically, wash your entire kitchen regularly otherwise you’re going to be sitting on the toilet for the foreseeable future, and that is NOT a good look. Trust me.

(Image: Getty)