It’s not pleasant to think about, but whenever you put food or drink into your body that someone else has made you’re rolling the dice. 99.9% of the time, hygiene rules will be followed, employees will do their jobs, and everything will be fine.
But that 0.1% can be a killer, literally. You simply cannot know what’s really going on in a kitchen or behind a bar, and it’s easy to find horror stories from restaurant workers revealing the dark truths of what happens when they think nobody is looking.
For a truly disturbing example, see this surreptitiously recorded video from the T20 World Cup in India. This is one of the biggest cricket tournaments in the world, with twenty teams competing in 55 matches across five venues in India and three in Sri Lanka. As such, fans are arriving from around the world, but… maybe they should watch what they drink:
Cricket fans from around the world are being served drinks mixed with leftovers from used cups at a T20 World Cup stadium in India.
— Codex_Indîa (@Codex_India6) February 12, 2026
This is a public health nightmare. pic.twitter.com/XtWqxI7oJy
Disturbing footage from one of the stadiums appears to show workers taking discarded drinks cups half full of soda and pouring when remains back into the bottle. The suspicion is that this soda is being recycled and sold again to unsuspecting fans, who don’t realize their drink has already been served to someone else.
“Unacceptable and dangerous”
If true, this would be a huge hygiene violation, as it’s a clear way for bacteria, viruses, and all kinds of nasty stuff to spread between fans. If you’re lucky, a cold sore. If you’re not, welcome to brown town.
Fans are aghast:
This is absolutely unacceptable and dangerous. Health inspections should happen immediately. Fans deserve safe food and drinks at international events. ICC must investigate and ensure strict hygiene standards across all World Cup venues without exception.
And, simply:
“Do you want hepatitis, because that’s how you get hepatitis.”
It’s worth underlining that this video is all we have and we can’t say whether the recycled soda was served to any other customer. I suppose it’s plausible that if this stand didn’t have a drain or container to keep liquid, they’re returning it to a bottle that would be disposed of later.
Even if that’s the case, anyone who’s worked in a restaurant would know it’s a huge no-no to store waste liquids inside a container marked for service to the public. And, frankly, the above scenario feels like a stretch.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s to only consume drinks that are served to you in a sealed container without any signs of tampering, or if that’s not possible ensure you can see them being dispensed from a fountain or a container that’s unsealed as you watch. We can only hope that nobody became ill from this incident, but it’s going to make me think twice the next time I go for refreshments at a sporting event.
