“But my guess is that most restaurant owners wouldn’t have the vaguest idea about how to flush those machines, or that they would even need too,” said Godard.

Microbiologists not involved in the study weren’t surprised of coliform colonies in the soda fountain machines.

“Wherever man is there will be representation of feces,” said Philip Tierno, director of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at New York University Langone Medical Center.

“We’re basically bathed in feces as a society,” he said.