The danger for steak is on the surface, where proper searing removes the danger. That's why ground beef can be a problem, and also why I don't buy my steak at Costco, where they shove external bacteria into the meat with an automated jaccard.
Posted on 12/25/2025 2:39:17 AM PST by Libloather
Even foods most Americans consider "healthy" can pose serious foodborne illness risks, experts warn — and several say salads, sprouts and deli meats are among the everyday items they personally refuse to eat.
One Seattle attorney who has spent decades litigating some of the country's worst foodborne illness outbreaks recently told The Washington Post that his well-done burger and steak order has prompted chefs to come out and ask what's wrong with him.
"I explain what I do for a living," Bill Marler told the outlet. "It's an occupational hazard."
He said he no longer touches bagged salads, fruit cups or trays, deli meats, ready-to-eat meals and raw sprouts — which are often served raw on sandwiches, salads and wraps.
He said the items have been repeatedly tied to cross-contamination and major Listeria, E. coli and Salmonella outbreaks.
While most diners view greens as a safe choice, Marler said he avoids them entirely when eating out.
Fox News Digital reached out to Marler for further comment — but several other experts said they agree. They added that the riskiest foods to eat may not be the ones consumers expect.
The list of problematic items reflects how outbreak patterns have shifted over time, Bryan Quoc Le, a food scientist with Mendocino Food Consulting in California, told Fox News Digital.
"Ground beef risks have decreased due to testing and cooking requirements, while leafy greens lack a 'heat step' and are known to become contaminated earlier in the supply chain, where controls are harder to enforce," Le said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“I’ve never gotten sick in the least.”
In many decades of traveling, I’ve had food poisoning twice after eating out. Once for about 6 hours. The other I was violently sick for 10 days. The well known seafood place I ate at was then shut down for a month and fined for using bad fish, old fish, etc.
But that is it. I rarely eat fish both because much of my time is far from the coast and because of bad memories...but 2 episodes during 65 years of living isn’t bad - and one of those was over in a few hours!
I’ve never been sick after eating hamburger although much of my life was before 2010-ish when they started requiring burnt hamburgers. I still eat mine med-rare at home and have never been sick from doing so!
“I’ve never gotten sick in the least.”
Same with us. Not even on cruises.
Soup from a pot is the worst imho. I never order it or go to the salad bar.
There was a rather portly NFL coach (can’t recall his name) who once told Bobby Knight “Nothing good ever happened at a salad bar”.
What the heck, I’m not doing anything else at the moment...
“For descriptions of other parts of the country, we are indebted to the 1937 Report of the Palestine Royal Commission—though, for lack of space, we can quote but the briefest passages. In Chapter 9, para. 43 the Report quotes an eye-witness account of the condition of the Maritime Plain in 1913:
The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts . . . no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached Yabna village. . . . Not in a single village in all this area was water used for irrigation. . . .Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen. . . .The ploughs used were of wood. . . . The yields were very poor. . . .The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist. . . . The rate of infant mortality was very high. . . .
The area north of Jaffa . . . consisted of two distinctive parts. . . . The eastern part, in the direction of the hills, resembled in culture that of the Gaza-Jaffa area. . . . The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert. . . . The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants....
Statistics published in the Palestine Royal Commission Report (p. 279) indicate a remarkable phenomenon: Palestine, traditionally a country of Arab emigration, became after World War I a country of Arab immigration. In addition to recorded figures for 1920-36, the Report devotes a special section to illegal Arab immigration. While there are no precise totals on the extent of Arab immigration between the two World Wars, estimates vary between 60,000 and 100,000. The principal cause of the change of direction was Jewish development, which created new and attractive work opportunities and, in general, a standard of living previously unknown in the Middle East.
Another major factor in the rapid growth of the Arab population was, of course, the rate of natural increase, among the highest in the world. This was accentuated by the steady reduction of the previously high infant mortality rate as a result of the improved health and sanitary conditions introduced by the Jews.
Altogether, the non-Jewish element in Palestine’s population (not including Bedouin) expanded between 1922 and 1929 alone by more than 75 per cent....
During World War II, the Arab population influx mounted apace, as is attested by the UNRWA Review, Information Paper No. 6 (September 1962):
A considerable movement of people is known to have occurred, particularly during the Second World War, years when new opportunities of employment opened up in the towns and on military works in Palestine. These wartime prospects and, generally, the higher rate of industrialization in Palestine attracted many new immigrants from the neighbouring countries, and many of them entered Palestine without their presence being officially recorded.
https://lessons.myjli.com/survival/index.php/2017/03/26/land-ownership-in-palestine-1880-1948/
My point is NOT that there were no Arabs there at all, but that when the Jews started improving the land and increasing wages, there were a lot of Arabs who moved to the region - AFTER 1900.
There is a reason why the UN counted Arab refugees who had been there for 10 years or less.
I’ve never gotten salmonella from a shot of Woodford Reserve. 😉
W.C. Fields famously said I don’t eat lettuce because illegals defecate on it.
lol, just eat a salad with a whiskey chaser 😂
I always have them boil my salad for at least ten minutes, croutons and all.
later
why not “blue lights” above salad bars so to speak to kill those microbes? Ultra violet lighting has been used to kill nasties as well as other applications.
I almost never eat sushi, but if I do, I like to wash it down with a shot or two of Suntory or Iwai or a glass of plum wine so as to to pickle any critters.
That would help kill germs, though I imagine the color of the lighting would make the food appear less appetizing. Most UV lights that I’ve seen show a purple color in the visible spectrum.
The danger for steak is on the surface, where proper searing removes the danger. That's why ground beef can be a problem, and also why I don't buy my steak at Costco, where they shove external bacteria into the meat with an automated jaccard.
But did you know your posted that in a thread
What food safety experts say they won't order when dining out at restaurants?
Oops! Not sure how THAT happened!
Oh well...
That is due to being new to FR. 1998?
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