Pretty much the last thing you want on your salad greens is bacteria that tends to reside in human feces. Many people, including me, buy the pre-washed spinach and romaine lettuce in bags expecting them to be clean and bacteria-free.

Well, Consumer Reports pretty much blew this belief out of the water. According to their recent tests, 39 percent of packaged salad green samples exceeded the level for total coliforms considered acceptable and 23 percent exceeded this level for enterococcus bacteria...bacteria that Consumer Reports describes as "better indicators of fecal contamination." Shocked and concerned? I know I am. The first question that pops into my mind is what type of feces are we talking about - animal or human (not that any type of fecal bacteria is more desirable than another)?

What did researchers look for?

• Total coliforms: Water is commonly tested for total coliforms to indicate the general quality of the water and the likelihood the water is fecally contaminated. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "Coliforms are a group of bacteria, most of which are harmless. At first glance, it might seem strange that a harmless group of bacteria such as coliforms could cause such commotion. But like police tape and chalk outlines, coliform bacteria are often found at the scene of a crime even though they are not themselves criminals."


• Enterococcus: One of the bacteria they tested for is enterococcus. If this refers to enterococcus faecalis then we are talking about an extremely durable bacterium that normally lives in the gastro-intestinal tracts of humans. How durable are we talking about? It can survive 77 days on dirt. Food technologists from the Agricultural Research Service Produce Quality and Safety Laboratory discovered recently that bacteria can actually become hardier and more likely to survive exposure to stomach acid when the bacteria are sitting in air-starved containers/bags while in the presence of nutrients, which are coming from the cut leaves of lettuce.

What are the symptoms?
What types of symptoms can someone expect from bacteria contamination in their salad greens? It all depends on the bacteria. If it's enterococcus faecalis, someone might experience fever, confusion, urinary tract infection with painful urination and blood in urine. The bacteria responsible for the food poisoning outbreak with raw spinach in previous years, E. coli, can cause severe stomach cramps and diarrhea, nausea and vomiting.

What can we do to decrease our risk of consuming high amounts of bacteria on salad greens (bagged or otherwise)?

• Buy bags of salads greens from the back of the shelf and as far from their use-by date as you can get your hands on. Consumer Reports found in their tests that the packages one to five days from their use-by date were more likely to have higher bacteria levels.


• In light of this new information about washed and packaged lettuce, particularly spinach, is it better to buy a head of lettuce? It seems like it might be better to buy it as a head since the bags, due to the low oxygen environment in the bag (which encourages the lettuce to stay fresh) seems to encourage bacteria growth if they are improperly stored (unrefrigerated for an extended period).


• Try to buy ready-to-eat salads and salad green from stores where they appear to be properly stored at cold temperatures and keep them at cold temperatures when you are storing them at home.


• Wash your greens yourself when you bring them home from the store, even the prewashed or triple-washed ones. Rinse them well in clean, running water and pat them dry or use a salad spinner to remove excess water. If you aren't using them immediately, you can put the salad greens in a clean bag, not the same bag you bought them in. The longer the greens sit in the bags and the closer to their use-by date, the more chance the bacteria has to multiply.

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Labels: E coli, food safety, prevention, public health, salad

"Once in awhile I'll eat whole wheat bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I don't do this too often. But the other day at the grocers while looking at their collection of balsamic vinegars a sign was posted warning customers that the vinegars contain lead?! How long has this been going on and how is lead getting into the vinegars? Now I'm worried."

I've received a few questions about the lead content of balsamic vinegar on my Healthy Cooking message board, so I did a little research. In 2004, an environmental law group filed suit in the state of California claiming that lead levels in balsamic and wine vinegars violated California Prop. 65, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986.

I wouldn't throw your balsamic vinegar away, but I would stay tuned in in the coming years as they figure out whether the lead content in some types of balsamic vinegar might be higher than expected and if so, why.

Lead has been in the environment for ages as a toxic metal (it's in the air, water, factory pollution, some pipes, old paint, some imported pottery, and in soil). People have been manufacturing and consuming balsamic vinegar for hundreds of years.

I looked up some details on how this type of vinegar is produced in THE FOOD ENCYCLOPEDIA. It is made from the cooked and concentrated MUST of white grapes in the area around Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy. The juice of local Trebbiano grapes is aged in a succession of 12 kegs, each decreasing in size, made of different aromatic woods, such as juniper, mulberry, chestnut and red oak. Sounds simple enough, but this process can take from the required minimum of 12 years aged in wood to as long as 50 years! Perhaps the small amount of lead is transferred from the containers it is being stored in all those years? Or is it getting into the grapes through contaminated water in certain areas? Is it getting into the grapes from the soil? I'm just brainstorming here. Testing appears to be going on as we speak so perhaps we'll know more in the near future.

Meanwhile, I personally would worry more about the lead in my environment (water, air, old paint etc.) and less about the balsamic vinegar I use a few times a week. Just my opinion!

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Labels: balsamic vinegar, food, food safety, lead

Super Healthy Foods Are On the List!

We expect to see leafy greens, tomatoes and power fruits like berries on the list of "super healthy" foods we should be eating more of...but we are not expecting to see them on the list of the 10 riskiest foods regulated by the U.S. Food And Drug Administration (FDA).

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) authored this just-released report and identified which FDA regulated foods are responsible for the most food-borne outbreaks (using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and elsewhere). The FDA is responsible for regulating 80% of the food supply including produce, seafood, egg & dairy and typical packaged foods such as peanut butter and cookie dough.

Here's the list with the top three being the heaviest hitters:

1. Leafy greens, involved in 363 outbreaks and 13,568 reported cases of illness.
2. Eggs, involved in 352 outbreaks and 11,163 reported cases of illness.
3. Tuna, involved in 268 outbreaks and 2,341 reported cases of illness.
4. Oysters, involved in 132 outbreaks and 3,409 reported cases of illness.
5. Potatoes, involved in 108 outbreaks and 3,659 reported cases of illness.
6. Cheese, involved in 83 outbreaks and 2,761 reported cases of illness.
7. Ice cream, involved in 74 outbreaks and 2,594 reported cases of illness.
8. Tomatoes, involved in 31 outbreaks and 3,292 reported cases of illness.
9. Sprouts, involved in 31 outbreaks and 2,022 reported cases of illness.
10. Berries, involved in 25 outbreaks and 3,397 reported cases of illness.

Tell me more about the top 3

#1 Leafy greens
The majority of the outbreaks were linked to the norovirus, spread by unwashed hands of an ill food handler or consumer. The rest were mostly caused by E. coli and salmonella.

What can you do about it?
Well, since most of the outbreaks occurred in restaurants, we need to choose our restaurants carefully as always. Chlorine washes and other post-harvest treatments can reduce cross contamination but they don't completely eliminate risk. According to CSPI, most of the leafy greens sold have already been through washing and treatment tanks that are more high tech than we could achieve washing them in our own sink. Although this doesn't help you when eating a salad, cooking the greens will reduce the risk of contamination because the heat kills the bacteria.

Does organic increase or decrease the risk of food poisoning? The Center for Disease Control doesn't break out their data on outbreaks based on regular or organic produce, but CSPI is assuming that the risk is similar.

#2 Eggs
The majority of illnesses from eggs can be traced to the "S" word - salmonella. The 1970s saw a big reduction in risk of salmonella from eggs thanks to new regulations for cleaning and inspecting eggs (most types of salmonella live in the intestinal tracts of the birds and when the egg is contaminated with the feces, it can be passed to humans.) But unfortunately it isn't that simple. Today the most common type of salmonella (salmonella enteriditis) contaminates the eggs before the shells are even formed because this type of Salmonella infects the ovaries of the hens.

What can you do about it?
Luckily the future looks brighter for egg lovers. New regulations aimed at minimizing salmonella enteriditis in egg production become effective in 2010 or 2012, depending on the size of the egg producer). As always though, cooking eggs thoroughly destroys most pathogens and serving eggs raw or "runny" or leaving egg dishes near room temperature for too long can encourage bacteria to multiply.

#3 Tuna
Much of the risk here has to do with fresh tuna, not canned, and tuna eaten in restaurants, not at home. The main culprit is a toxin called scombrotoxin that is released when fresh fish is stored above 60 degrees Fahrenheit and begins to decay. Symptoms of scombroid poisoning can include skin flushing, headaches, abdominal cramps, nausea, diarrhea, palpitations and loss of vision. There have been some outbreaks from tuna salad consumption so canned tuna is not completely off the hook (so to speak).

What can you do about it?
Adequate refrigeration and handling can slow the process of fish spoiling, according to CSPI, but surprisingly the toxin cannot be destroyed (once released) by cooking, freezing or canning. Eating tuna raw or cooked in restaurants doesn't seem to make a difference in risk. If buying tuna is your aim (in restaurants or in grocery stores or fish markets) make every effort to choose seafood suppliers that are known for having high standards for their fish and handling practices.

For more information, read the entire report: The 10 Riskiest Foods Regulated By The U.S. Food And Drug Administration.

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Labels: E coli, food poisining, food safety, norovirus, samonella