Guacamole, Salsa Pose Hazard: Study

Wall Street Journal ^ | 07/13/2010 | Isaac Arnsdorf

[E. Pluribus Unum]

My wife and I quit going to our favorite Mexican restaurant after we saw them recycling the leftover salsa as they cleaned off the tables.

I miss that place.

[steveo]

OH MY I GONNA DIE!

[BubbaJunebug]

Just thiink of all the years you ate some elses burrito...or better yet refried beans...Hmmmm good

[DoughtyOne]

One has to ask, what happened to those restaurant back-end operations in the last decade? As if we didn’t know...

Food poisoning, just another task U. S. Citizens refuse to do.

[dalebert]

i stopped going when i saw them recycling illegals.

[battlecry]

Hmm. I thought that stuff was so acidic bacteria found it hard to live in it.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

I got sick from bad guacamole once. It wasn’t fun.

[P.O.E.]

Last time I went to Taco Bell saw the delivery truck unloading boxes marked “Grade E But Edible”.

Last time I went to Taco Bell.

[Beagle8U]

I like salsa ,but, I’ve never had any doubt that that nasty looking green snot they call guakamoldy would kill anyone foolish enough to eat it.

[JRandomFreeper]

Fresh salsa is often not acidic enough to kill the bugs.

One of the greatest threats is shigella from 'fecal spattering' onto tomatoes in the field.

If I buy tomatoes to eat fresh, I always soak them in a 50ppm solution of bleach water. That's the easiest way to avoid shigella.

/johnny

[P.O.E.]

Sorry, hit post before finishing: That anecdote is from an urban legend that goes on to add: The meat has anti-vomitory agents added.

[Mr. Bird]

Not sure why the WSJ thinks this is news. Several other foods are more “dangerous” if not prepared properly. The fact that salsa and quacamole represent a larger percentage of disease sources overall may just be reflective of their increased popularity over the prior decade.

[gundog]

Tomatoes are too acidic. Bacteria couldn’t live long enough to produce toxins. Wouldn’t bet the hacienda that toxins don’t get mixed in, though.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

I couldn’t care less about guacamole but salsa really isn’t something I can live without at this point. The hotter the better.

[jiggyboy]

I’m guessing it’s a correlation-not-causation issue: as we have seen many times in recent years, restaurants of a certain ethnic culture, coincidentally employing people of the same ethnic culture almost exclusively, are overwhelmingly the cause of widespread episodes of food-borne sickness. These restaurants would be serving guacamole and/or salsa to nearly every patron.

[aragorn]

If you like it hot, try this place:

Southwest Specialty Food

The Spontaneous Combustion Ground Habanero is very versatile and adds some nice heat and flavor to just about anything. The Ass Kickin' Snack Mix on this page is very addictive, and the Ass Kickin' Peanuts on the same page are quite good too.

I have not tried any of their sauces, though I do have some of their breading mix that I'm looking forward to trying.

BTW, I've been using various flavors of UNIX since early '80s. I'm not just a UNIX geek, I'm a UNIX bigot!

[Spitzensparkin1]

They always want to blame “poor food storage temperatures” or some “small farm” in some obscure place as the culprit. Never is it mentioned that by far the greatest source of this type of food poisoning is due to the high numbers of illiterate and uneducated illegal aliens employed throughout our entire US food chain. Uneducated (no free public schools there)and the illiterate (many can't even read or write well in Spanish, their native language) Mexicans don't care about our food safety and sanitary food handling laws any more than they care about being here legally. They will do as in Mexico whenever no one’s watching!

Where is the media on this? Guess they ate the whole guacamole.

[FReepaholic]

My family got sick recently after eating at a local steak house. Everybody ordered different entrees but we all shared an appetizer of tortilla chips with queso and salsa. Had to have been that.

[Jack Hammer]

It remains an unfortunate fact that life invariably leads to death.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

It remains an unfortunate fact that life invariably leads to death.

Oh noes! We're all going to die!