Count me in.
Posted on 02/03/2016 3:00:03 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
In the aftermath of an E. coli outbreak at Chipotle that sickened dozens of people across the United States last fall and led to an overhaul of the company's food safety practices, Americans reacted by avoiding the beloved fast-food chain. Restaurants that once sported long lines were suddenly empty, a phenomenon that was almost surely happening nationwide.
The risks, in other words, were simply too great in people's minds for them to continue frequenting the Mexican-inspired favorite, because Chipotle had a food safety problem.
But the outrage was at least partly misplaced, according to Bill Marler, a lawyer specializing in food-borne illness. The outbreak, he says, was less of an anomaly specific to the chain than a symptom of the American food system, which isn't as safe as it could be and really should be.
Marler, who has been involved in many high-profile outbreaks over the past 30 years, including the 1993 E. coli outbreak at Jack in the Box, which killed several children and forced the government to impose zero tolerance for the presence of the pathogen in food, says that problems such as the one at Chipotle are far more common than most people realize. ~snip~ In 2014, the most recent year for which data is available, more than 8,000 food products were recalled by the Food and Drug Administration, and nearly 100 were recalled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The problem touches organic foods, too.
~snip~
In a recent piece, published in Bottom Line Health, he lists six foods he no longer eats, because he believes the risk of eating them is simply too large. The list includes raw oysters and other raw shellfish, raw or under-cooked eggs, meat that isn't well-done, unpasteurized milk and juice, and raw sprouts.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Exactly. You could down a whole box of Ring Dings and at worse might feel a bit bilious. But food poisoning? Never! ;-)
I dig my own clams from waters that are tested regularly. Those are the only clams I will ever eat raw. Even here, the clams they sell in the grocery stores are often several weeks old, often as many as 6 weeks out of the water. That’s freakin gross.
Smoked baby clams damn near killed me. Never again.
Why bother eating meat if you cook it to well done? I’m a Marylander and I’m going to eschew raw bars? I think not. We only consume farm fresh eggs, over easy for me.
“Only eating well-done meat seems a bit too general. Ground meat, maybe, but only well-done steaks? That just seems silly.”
Exactly. Bacterial contamination can be all through ground meat but its only found on the surface of a steak where its easy to kill.
To put it more simply...
....I only eat foods produced in the USA
My grocery store does a good job providing local market and USA produced fresh foods
HOWEVER their frozen foods display are loaded with vegetables grown in Mexico or fish from China
I don’t eat anything undercooked, esp eggs
No meat that isn’t well done?! BLASPHEMY! I’ll eat my ribeye rare and no one will stop me from doing so!
I’ve been eating raw foods since I was a little kid. Growing up in Florida, we used to go out into oyster beds, shuck them straight on the boat and eat them with hot sauce and lemon. Never once got sick.
The sickest I’ve ever been from food poisoning was from a restaurant that prided themselves on being “organic,” and even then, I think I got sick from the salad and not the sushi.
I also only eat medium rare steaks. Some expert he is. eh? Rare store ground hamburger or any sausage even if I make it myself? Never. If I grind it myself can we say delicious medium rare burgers? Since whatever was on the surface has no time to spread and incubate, you bet your butt we can. The reason for this is surface area. As long as you sear your steak, you can have the middle blood red. Virtually no risk. Grind the meat and let it sit even at fridge temps, you have to be cooked edge to edge. (High risk) Grind your own and use immediately and cook medium rare. (Low risk)
As far as eggs go, just buy pasteurized eggs. No risk. If you have a few spare bucks laying about get an immersion circulator (souse vide machine), and just pasteurize your own. Anova makes a not ridiculously expensive one (I have one) Skip trying veggies in it. Stick to proteins. Check out what you can do with eggs in one. https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/the-egg-calculator. Ever had an egg with a crumbly firm yolk and runny whites? You can do it. (Don’t know why you would want too, but you can) All I can say is perfect eggs every time consistently with every egg identical.
Hit youtube and see what you can do with meat. Chuck that is like ribeye, and still medium rare, edge to edge. Edge to edge perfectly pink steak, with no overcooked surface band. Get a MAP gas torch to do the final sear.
About once a week I get lazy, throw some baking potatoes in the oven for an hour (400F), a cpl of ribeyes in the Sous Vide at 131 F for that same hour and cut the bottoms off of a bunch of asparagus. Put the asparagus in cold water. Half an hour in I drain the asparagus, toss them with olive oil salt and pepper, and toss them on a baking sheet, and into the oven for 20 minutes. At the end of the hour I sear the steaks with a torch. Total work time on the meal, < 10 minutes for a fancy restaurant quality meal. Steaks always perfect. The sides are also always the same.
me too
rare steak or medium rare steak is not a problem if the exterior that might have the bacteria is well seared.
Hamburger is a different matter.
Just buy pasteurized, or see my post above this one for other options.
I could not live without Caesar dressing, Hollandaise, my quick stick blender mayo, or a myriad of other things like egg cream for pastries.
I’m in full agreement with their list, especially uncooked meat of any sort. When I put a fork into a steak I do not want to see it wiggle or hear it beller.
So no carpachio, steak tartar or sushi for you, eh? OK. Some people are squeemish. Would you settle for a medium rare steak?
If not you are not invited over for dinner. I refuse to ruin steak. ;-)
Sometimes you just feel like a Ring Ding! (and Ho Hos & Devil Dogs too!)
Count me in.
I love my raw sprouts
I’ll only eat ground beef well done, but beef steaks and roasts if properly prepared are safe to eat medium or even medium rare.
Most folks aren’t smart enough to realize organic = feces.
Give me clean, safe, chemical fertilizers.
His “expertise” is problematic.
To start with, when there are problems with eggs or dairy products, it is almost always because the animals involved are being kept in very unsanitary circumstances. This tends to happen in mass scale agribusiness, far less in smaller farms.
Here is a surprise: pasteurization *does not* sterilize milk. In only reduces how many bacteria are living in the milk. This is why milk still spoils in sealed containers in the refrigerator. Milk that has been sterilized by pasteurization tastes awful.
Milk that has been almost completely sterilized using “high-temperature short-time” (HTST or HST), (160F to 165F), for about 15 to 30 seconds, isn’t as chemically altered (though I think it still tastes cruddy), and has an *un-refrigerated* shelf life of perhaps 6 months. It is mostly used for whipping cream.
Raw milk, produced exclusively on small farms that go to extremes to avoid being shut down by government, is incredibly delicious. It is worth trying, though thereafter pasteurized milk will taste like chalky water.
Both the bacteriophobe government agencies and the dairy industries hate and fear raw milk producers, and are determined to shut them down for good, even if it takes the government registration of all farm animals to do so.
The flip side of all of this is that bacterial infections are almost always “numbers games”. That is, except for children, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems or who have recently taken antibiotics, most people can tolerate a given amount of pathogenic bacteria. Their immune system and intestinal flora will suppress it.
If you consume more than that amount, you will become sick by degrees. That is, somewhat more than the infectious dose and you will get queasy. A lot more and your immune system’s response will make you ill. This is food poisoning.
Most food poisoning from beef comes with contaminated hamburger that has been undercooked. Chicken is a lot easier because it is naturally much more septic, and the bacteria lives under the skin and in the fat.
Eating raw seafood, aka sushi, is something you shouldn’t eat, because the odds are substantial that it will make you quite ill, sooner or later.
We are alike.
I always grind my own burger and make sausage.
The Anova is nice but I modified a cooler to be a Sous Vide machine and it has a 25’ cord...I put it in the trunk of my pickup (yes, trunk) and can bring it places with great meat ready to go after a quick torching. Fantastic devices these Sous Vide machines...
Have yet to do eggs but will some day...Wife loves scallops!
I do a lot of grilling on my ceramic grill - makes fantastic burgers.
Also have a hydroponic garden for veggies.
All pork well done just like mom always said.
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