Why does it seem to be so easy to get sick when you’re trying your hardest to eat healthy foods?
Last month, I gave you the details about the fatal E. coli outbreak caused by tainted romaine lettuce. That pathogen can damage red blood cells and trigger kidney failure.
Before that, eggs sickened around 40 across the country when dirty processing plants contaminated them with salmonella.
Now, there’s a salmonella outbreak from fresh-cut melon.
I’m sure the CDC is hot on the trail of this tainted fruit so that it can give us a detailed update on what went wrong. Of course, that doesn’t help the dozens who were sickened, some seriously enough to land in the hospital.
And it also doesn’t help us when we go shopping. What food will be next? Unfortunately, that question is nearly impossible to answer.
But despite the fact that practically anything you eat can harbor nasty pathogens (including cold cereal such as Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, which was recently found to be contaminated with salmonella), there are four easy steps to take that can keep healthy foods on your plate without risking a trip to the ER!
Keeping contaminants at bay
What could be a better choice when you’re on the go than a chilled and ready-to-eat combo of watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, and other healthy fruits? But for the five dozen people who recently ate mixed fruit cups that were tainted with salmonella, it proved to be anything but!
These contaminated containers of fruit were sold from Georgia to Ohio by such major chains as Costco, Walgreens, Walmart, and Whole Foods, with the source believed to be pre-cut melons from Indiana.
Although this sickening fruit should have already been removed from supermarket shelves, there’s no way to be sure that the new batch coming into your store will be any safer.
That’s because consuming pre-cut fruits and veggies can be one of the easiest ways to make yourself sick in the name of convenience.
Anytime a food is processed — while it may eliminate the prep work involved in washing, slicing, and dicing — it has been exposed to a variety of equipment and human handling. And anywhere down the line, those ready-to-use fruits and veggies (from strawberries to sliced apples to diced onions) can become contaminated.
So, the first step you want to take to steer clear of a foodborne illness is to stay away from all ready-to-use convenience produce, which also includes those bagged salads.
While that may add a bit more time to meal preparation, remember, a foodborne illness isn’t just something that happens to someone else. Anyone is vulnerable, and it can be especially risky if you’re very young or a bit on the older side. So, whatever you can do to avoid it is well worth the effort!
Along with ditching those easy-to-eat edibles, here are some other steps you can take to protect yourself and your family from risky pathogens.
#1: Before cutting into a whole melon, be sure to wash it well under running water, scrubbing the skin with a vegetable brush. Melons are generally safe due to their thick, protective skin, but the outside can easily become contaminated in the field (they grow on the ground) or during picking and shipping. And when you slice into one, you can be taking any pathogens that are on the skin and depositing them right into the interior of the fruit!
#2: Be especially careful with any foods you don’t heat before eating (as cooking should kill most all menacing microbes). That means selecting produce that isn’t bruised or damaged and making sure not to “cross-contaminate” it by placing it on an unwashed surface where raw meat or poultry has been prepared.
#3: Wash all greens and veggies well under running water. A friend of mine uses one of those salad “spinners” with some water in it to give greens a thorough rinsing (as if they were in a washer!), then dumps the water out and spins them again to dry them off.
#4: Although you may think that freezing kills off these dangerous bugs, it doesn’t — it simply slows down their reproduction. If fruit is contaminated when it’s packaged, freezing it, according to one expert, actually does a “pretty good job of preserving” pathogens, which are ready to spring into action again once it’s thawed. (This includes all those smoothie fruit mixes that are so popular.)
Also, any produce that has crevices (such as romaine lettuce), should be washed especially well, as those nooks and crannies are excellent hiding places for pathogens. Some cooks use a solution of 1 tablespoon hydrogen peroxide to a gallon of water to wash greens in by swishing around the produce and then rinsing it thoroughly.
Due to its net-like rind, which can easily trap bacteria, the hard-to-wash cantaloupe is especially risky to buy pre-cut.
Remember: Every little precaution you take when preparing food — while no guarantee that it will make it perfectly safe — is still a step in the right direction to keep salmonella, E. coli and a witches’ brew of other germs off your plate!
“FDA expands salmonella-melon waring to more than 20 states” CBS News, June 17, 2018, news9.com
