“...they should really cook their vegetables. A bout of a pathogen that causes someone to camp out in the bathroom can kill the elderly.”
I spent about three years in Thailand when I was young and my mother used to soak vegetable matter in a mixture of Artesian well water and Clorox. Because thai farming methods used natural human waste for fertilizer, at least they did back in the mid-sixties.
These days I eat vegetables cooked in what is known as waterless cookware which retains quite a few of the essential vitamins and nutrients in plant matter.
But there is always that lettuce on a sandwich with a cut up tomato that could be a problem. I’ve eliminated nightshades from my diet over the last 10 years as my doctor noticed a vitamin D deficiency in my blood work that is nagging and will not go away. After cutting out nightshades for about 6 months my blood panel came back with a reduced white blood cell count. Did the nightshades work at reducing my systemic inflammation? Truthfully, I don’t know, but it could be promising if the production or total abstinence from nightshade vegetables is in fact the reason for my decreased white blood cell count and subsequent systemic inflammation which has been chronic.
[But there is always that lettuce on a sandwich with a cut up tomato that could be a problem.]
It’s not perfect, but I expect temperatures in the sandwiches to reach 160F for the seconds necessary to kill the vast majority of pathogens. I also like the cheese in my sandwiches to be melted. And if my cold cuts are a little past their prime because they weren’t properly stored at the deli/grocery store, that treatment kills the bugs as well.
The following MUST be cooked to listed internal temperatures and times:
145 F or above for 15 seconds
Eggs for immediate service.
Fish (except as otherwise required).
Meat (except as otherwise required).
Commercially raised game animals (except as otherwise required).
155 F or above for 15 seconds, or
150 F or above for one minute, or
145 F or above for three minutes
Chopped or ground meat.
Chopped or ground fish.
Chopped or ground commercially raised game animals.
Pork.
Injected meats.
Eggs cooked for hot holding.
165 F or above for 15 seconds
Poultry.
Stuffed food products.
Stuffing containing fish, meat, poultry or wild game animals.]