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How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US

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Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US

#81

Post by echlebek »

goldenkey wrote: post #78
verbify wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't my area, but I've heard that cooking is part of digestion. I know evolutionary biology isn't as intuitive as people always assume, but theoretically this fits within my model - digestion burns precious calories (at least in a world with too many calories), breaking down the food using fire somewhat allows for the body to spend less calories on breaking it down itself. So our ancestors who used fire to cook…

The hydrochloric acid in the stomach is pretty strong, about 1.5 ph. Cooking is mild for most compounds compared to dissolution in strong acid. I don't think we cook too much. Like you said, it is mostly just predigestion.

Cooked food provides more energy than raw food. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2011/12/08/why-calori...

Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US

#82

Post by ghostly_s »

tzakrajs wrote: post #77

The reason vegetables are poisonous is because of the animal waste that is being used to grow plants. If there wasn't such a huge livestock industry, people wouldn't be using their excrement for fertilizer and our plants would be safer.

What are other natural fertilizer options?

Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US

#83

Post by ghostly_s »

panarky wrote: post #44
cortesoft wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if you buy pre-cut bagged salad, how can you wash that? Not sure what you mean? Why can't you wash it?

It's chopped into hundreds of tiny pieces. Do you wash each piece individually? Or dump it into a bowl of water and swirl it around?? And then your salad is a soggy soup!

I...are you serious? You've never washed lettuce before? It's not like washing dishes.

Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US

#84

Post by logfromblammo »

rdtsc wrote: post #5

> Leafy vegetables were also the second most common cause of food poisoning-related hospitalizations. I never quite got to like lettuce. I don't know why people like it. It just doesn't have much taste, its leaves are too big, so have to shove them in awkwardly. I'd rather have a salad with chopped ripe tomatoes, onions / chives, cucumbers, cabbage, etc. Even with those, I often wonder if people don't eat more veggie…

Iceberg lettuce is the most pointless waste of time and money in the entire agricultural industry.

You are absolutely correct in your assessment of vegetable quality. Everything is bred for transportability, appearance, and shelf life, then flavor and nutrition go out the window.

It's exactly the same story as the Red Delicious apple. They were bred to be very red, not at all sour, and to not bruise too easily. So they look good, but taste like garbage.

I have noticed the same devolution in watermelons. You used to be able to get huge, arm-filling watermelons, juicy and sweet, but shot through with big black seeds. Now at the supermarket they're all seedless, nearly flavorless, and small.

Same with strawberries. They used to be small, but intensely flavored, and ranging from very sweet to slightly sour. Now you can find them as big as your clenched fist, but then bite into one, and it just tastes like dirty water.

I don't buy food to look at it. It seems like the greatest minds of the last agricultural generation have all been wasted on making foods look like they'll taste good, and look like they're worth the money, but then become a total disappointment to your tongue.

Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US

#85

Post by op00to »

rdtsc wrote: post #5

> Leafy vegetables were also the second most common cause of food poisoning-related hospitalizations. I never quite got to like lettuce. I don't know why people like it. It just doesn't have much taste, its leaves are too big, so have to shove them in awkwardly. I'd rather have a salad with chopped ripe tomatoes, onions / chives, cucumbers, cabbage, etc. Even with those, I often wonder if people don't eat more veggie…

American grocery store veggies taste exactly the same as any other industrialized nation that participates in a globalized food chain.

Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US

#86

Post by logfromblammo »

ghostly_s wrote: post #82
tzakrajs wrote: post #77

The reason vegetables are poisonous is because of the animal waste that is being used to grow plants. If there wasn't such a huge livestock industry, people wouldn't be using their excrement for fertilizer and our plants would be safer.

What are other natural fertilizer options?

Fallowing and plow-under, included in a rotation that includes nitrogen-fixers.

Application of volcanic tuff rock dust.

Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US

#87

Post by goldenkey »

brians wrote: post #43
Alupis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or... rinse it before you eat it. Just because it's already chopped and in a bag doesn't mean it suddenly doesn't need rinsing. If I recall, not rinsing pre-chopped lettuce was one of the things pointed out to Chipotle after their recent debacle, that may have helped avoid making customers sick.

E coli don't rinse off; they form a biofilm with significant adhesion. You have to cook them to kill them.

Once I found out about biofilms from the cat fountain I built from NSF silver infused antimicrobial tubing, I never can look at plumbing piping the same. Biofilm formed even on the parts that should have been impervious. Even areas where water is constantly running and splashing. First the minerals deposit on the antimicrobial surfaces, and then the bacteria attach and film.

I had always thought that constant high pressure water usage would flush whatever crap is in a pipe. Preventing any real contamination. Well...a quick google search shows that biofilm on residential water pipes is a huge problem. High pressure activity does not eliminate biofilm...of course stagnant water is more of an issue...

Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US

#88

Post by toasterlovin »

gregable wrote: post #49

Keep things in perspective though. That article mentions 3,000 people per year die from food poisoning, and leafy vegetables are the cause of 1/4 of that, or 750 deaths/year. However, heart disease alone causes 610,000 deaths per year ( https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm ). "Individuals who ate more than 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per had roughly a 20 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease" ( h…

Just keep in mind that epidemiology is fundamentally not able to tell you anything about positive causation.

In this case, individuals who eat more that 5 servings of fruits and vegetables probably also exhibit a whole host of behaviors that contribute to this outcome. Essentially, they are not a representative sample of the population at large, but rather a sub-group who is "healthful" in a whole bunch of ways.

Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US

#89

Post by jonnycoder »

Hydroponic lettuce is simply the easiest thing I've grown. I'm surprised I don't see it mentioned more often. I bought an Agrobrite 4 bulb T5 light on Amazon that runs 216watts. The math works out to $15/month if running 16 hours a day. It takes about 2-3 weeks for the 9 seeds to start, but I was swimming in lettuce in no time. It tastes excellent too. Search for Jeb Gardner on youtube for some entertaining lettuce videos grown in an office environment.

Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US

#90

Post by kss238 »

kaikai wrote: post #79
bluGill wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

glyphosate has been scientifically tested and found harmless. There are a number of organic chemicals that have been tested to equal (or lesser) standards and found harmful.

The WHO says glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic," which is not harmless at all. http://www.who.int/foodsafety/faq/en/

Also from that page

>JMPR’s risk assessment found out that based on the weight-of-evidence approach these compounds are unlikely to cause cancer in people via dietary exposure.

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