• We welcome content that is not political, divisive, or offensive. If we feel your content leans this way or has the potential to, it may be removed at any time. A hot pepper forum is not the place for such content. Thank you for respecting the community!

Food Poisoning

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

Vex mentioned getting food poisoning from watermelon once.  Made me wonder, what steps to you take to address the threat?  I think the most likely problem is e-coli.  I imagine the only thing a producer of things like melons can do is to wash the hell out of them.  You can take efforts to keep deer and other critters out your field, but lets face it... preventing a squirl or rabbit from getting into a 100 acre or more farm is probably not going to happen.

So what do you do to prevent this from happening to you?  Do you use any of those vegie washes, bleach or what?  I just use soap and water on melons, water on carrots.
 
Wash the hell out of your veggies and then pray you don't get food poisoning.
In all fairness the chances are very slim, but still real. Don't worry too much about it.
 
A healthy diet keeps your immune system strong and helps fight E. coli and other things we consume daily. I'm no doctor tho, just played one on a soap opera once.
 
Had food poisoning a few months ago...lost 12 lbs.
 
Learned I should keep activated charcoal pills with me when traveling.  Supposedly they will knock it down REAL quick.  That and drinking apple cider vinegar.
 
I lost 20# to salmonella. that was rough as I don't have 20# to lose...
Could have been the ceviche and sushi I ate at our resort in Mexico...could have been the Wendy's in the Minneapolis Airport.
 
rjacobs said:
Had food poisoning a few months ago...lost 12 lbs.
 
Learned I should keep activated charcoal pills with me when traveling.  Supposedly they will knock it down REAL quick.  That and drinking apple cider vinegar.
Click to expand...
Yep, when I traveled all over Indo I had a "go bag" from the CDC that had everything I needed and it was free. Those pills saved me more than once!
 
JoynersHotPeppers said:
Veggie wash - no matter what you do there will be times you CANNOT avoid it. Having had it twice recently there was nothing I could have done except not eat. 
Click to expand...
 
E.Coli is a bitch for these reasons:
 
But once the bacteria have attached themselves to the surface of a vegetable, they become much harder to kill.”
 
When these bacteria attach to a surface, they produce a substance called “biofilm,” which encases the bacteria in a sort of shell and helps them stick to whatever they’ve latched onto. This coating keeps them from being washed away and also protects them from chemicals that could otherwise disable them.  In other words, adding a few drops of bleach to the water you use to wash vegetables will kill any bacteria in the water but won’t do much to the bacteria on the vegetables. -
E. coli doesn’t just sit around on the surface of vegetables, either. The bacteria can also penetrate into the interior tissues of the plant, where no sanitizer can reach them.  And here's another reason that chemical sanitization can’t guarantee your safety: Even if a sanitizer succeeded in killing 99.9% of the bacteria present, that could still leave thousands of viable cells--and it only takes one to make you sick. 
 
The only real two ways to kill E Coli that is attached to veggies is irradiation and cooking.
 
Best practices start in the garden to keep the veggies as safe as possible.
 
P.S.  Always wash vegetables, there are a myriad of other things to wash them for.  I also wash pre-washed veggies (and use a distilled white vinegar and water).  Im paranoid though after getting major food poisoning before.  Its one of the worst experiences ever.
 
Malarky said:
I lost 20# to salmonella. that was rough as I don't have 20# to lose...
Could have been the ceviche and sushi I ate at our resort in Mexico...could have been the Wendy's in the Minneapolis Airport.
Click to expand...
or the lettuce garnish on the plate which is exactly how I got mine in Mexico hahaha
 
JoynersHotPeppers said:
or the lettuce garnish on the plate which is exactly how I got mine in Mexico hahaha
Click to expand...
 
I got mine from lettuce and/or water in India.

Let me tell you the 20 hour trip home was not fun for me, nor fun for the people on the emirates flight :/
 
Personally, I think more people get food contamination (not just e. coli) from things other than vegetables that might be contaminated from squirrels or deer.  These are in commercial environments as well as home environments.  Unwashed or improperly washed hands, unclean counter and cutting board, that NASTY sponge that sits on the edge of the sink and gets used to wipe down the counter but never ever gets sanitized, even the ring around the sink drain can harbor nasties.  So if the lettuce gets dunked into the sink full of water....there ya go...
 
Just think about a fruit or vegetable bought at a store, how many people have touched it and all the possible sources of contamination.  Something like a cucumber or apple that would be rinsed/washed but eaten raw and with the skin on.  Even if workers are wearing gloves, once they rub their nose, sneeze, etc, you know they don't go change the gloves, so the gloves are contaminated.
 
field worker that picks it
packing house workers
store produce person who puts it on the display
(who knows how many customers who picked it up and put it down before you pick it up and put it in your cart)
the cart itself
the conveyor belt at the check out
the weigh scale at check out
the other side of the check out before it goes into your eco-friendly cloth grocery bag
the cloth grocery bag which probably had a bit of meat juice leak on it, and you know those cloth bags 'never' get washed...
the bagger who just came out of the bathroom and didn't properly wash his hands.......
 
And that's not even taking into account the home environment!
 
Yea, I wouldn't worry about a few critters in the field~~~
 
There was an all natural non pasteurize applesauce for children that was all recalled after many got sick.  Seems workers were paid by the bushel so some picked apples up off the ground.  Because the stuff is not pasteurized, maybe one infected apple infected it all.  Mass produced food is kind of scary.  Maybe a thousand cows in a single hamburger just sounds like a recipe for disaster.
 
I eat bugs and normally don't wash my food. My opinion here probably won't be liked. I get more sick off a fast food burger than any thing I pick up off the ground. Antibiotics are killing your immune systems whether your washing your hands with it or treating your common cold.
 
robbyjoe01 said:
I eat bugs and normally don't wash my food. My opinion here probably won't be liked. I get more sick off a fast food burger than any thing I pick up off the ground. Antibiotics are killing your immune systems whether your washing your hands with it or treating your common cold.
Click to expand...
 
Maintaining a robust gut flora is my angle, too. Eating a varied diet is helpful ...
 
I do augment my colonies a couple of times of the year, by working in a series of lacto+ type capsules with billions of critters ...
 
I don't take antibiotics, and I almost always use regular soaps, not antimicrobial soaps ...
 
There's times though, that I'm a little bit more aggressive, or particularly methodical ...
 
Leeks and onions, for example ... peel a bit and waste a full-thickness later, rinse, and then slice ... and in the case of the leeks, I half the rings and wash the sections at the end too ...
 
Other times I'm the opposite ... I don't peel carrots, for instance, I scrub them ...
 
I do wash lettuce after I cut it, and then spin it dry ...
 
We also keep some 35% food-grade peroxide on the door of the fridge, for occasional use, but I don't recommend this if you have kids ...
 
Anyways, I'm in favor of a balance of washing things that tend to collect dirt, in particular, while at once bolstering your own ability to deal with it ...
 
Your skin is loaded with all of the these things, all the time, and you are ingesting them all of the time too ... a lot of it has to do with your system being able to handle it, and your 1st line of defense is chewing your food well, and then not diluting your stomach acid by drinking a lot of liquids while eating, and then just having that robust culture lower in your system ...
 
:cheers:
 
JoynersHotPeppers said:
If you have a thousand cows in your burger you are doing burgers wrong. ;)
Click to expand...
Its the industry.  McDonalds says up to 100.  But some of the anti meat industry folk say 1,000.  If a resturante grinds its own beef, chances are it is only a few.  Only a few because if they are busy it is not like they are cleaning the grinder between each hunk of beef.

Here is McDonalds admitting to 100.
 
Now McDonalds, unlike most meat processors, does have a policy that those 100 cows came from the same source.  I -think- that might be part of the Food Safety Modernization act.  If not, it should be.  That way when a batch of chopped meat turns up bad, they can trace it to the herd it came from. 

Anyway, the point being that even with things like applesauce, the industry blends so much original stock and then the stuff sits so long that if one bit is infected with something, it grows into a much larger load.  The food industry is frigging scary.

 
 
ajdrew said:
Its the industry.  McDonalds says up to 100.  But some of the anti meat industry folk say 1,000.  If a resturante grinds its own beef, chances are it is only a few.  Only a few because if they are busy it is not like they are cleaning the grinder between each hunk of beef.

Here is McDonalds admitting to 100.
 
Now McDonalds, unlike most meat processors, does have a policy that those 100 cows came from the same source.  I -think- that might be part of the Food Safety Modernization act.  If not, it should be.  That way when a batch of chopped meat turns up bad, they can trace it to the herd it came from. 

Anyway, the point being that even with things like applesauce, the industry blends so much original stock and then the stuff sits so long that if one bit is infected with something, it grows into a much larger load.  The food industry is frigging scary.

 
Click to expand...
Hence the reason I grind my own and do not eat that crap. ;) 
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top