tl;dr— people eat more salads now.
How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US
111–120 of 242 posts
Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US
#112Hydroponic 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 v…
I happen to be growing lettuce (and other things) in my office at work, and I can also attest to how easy it is. Only issue is that they need to be watered every other day.
Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US
#113Keep 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…
I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that we eat fewer leafy greens. I, however, definitely think that there could be a lot of improvements to the way that we farm them.
The issue isn't suggestions, it's how consumers behave when told that leafy greens killed some people.
Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US
#114Hydroponic 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 v…
Seems like Mesculan type greens would work well with that setup. Can harvest in a little over a month (well outdoors, I don't know with that light but maybe similar). It's mixed type greens, mustards, lettuce etc. Cut when leaves are about the size of the business part of a spoon. Cut it so it comes back and you can get 3 or 4 cuttings per planting. Plant it successively (i.e every week or two plant another section)…
The other cool thing about this is that you can let one go to seed and you will be swimming in seeds as well (though it's tricky to manage the light height because the flower stalk is quite tall).
Hydroponics are not just great for food, they are awesome for people suffering from lack of light exposure in winter months. When I lived in Canada, I used to put a 4 foot long plant stand with fluorescent daylight bulbs along each wall of my apartment. I can't remember how long I had the light timer set for (probably 14 hours). It's incredible the difference. These days you can get creative with various LED solutions and probably do even better.
Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
In what way would irradiation make a food not-organic? I believe you, it seems stupid enough to be true.
USDA rules aside, how would you define "organic". It's a rather ... synthetic concept to begin with.
I hope you don't mind if I expose you to a specific wavelength of light for a moment and witness chances in your chemical composition. You get a pretty green stamp too.
Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember living in China for an extended period of time and never seeing raw vegetables as part of a meal; locals I spoke with found the very concept unsanitary. It's unfortunate that some are advocating just abandoning chapters of our local cuisine as being no longer viable in our era. I'd rather we more strongly enforce regulations so we can hold onto our salads.
China has a long history of using human waste as fertilizer on fields, so only eating cooked vegetables was good hygiene. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/green_room/...
It's more fair that many, many places have done the same thing. When I was in Ghana for a summer in 1987, I was warned that "night soil" was often used in vegetable fields, and I should watch out for my tender American digestive system not being able to deal with the uncooked results. No slight against Ghana in particular, that's typical for countries at Ghana's level of development.
Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
E coli don't rinse off; they form a biofilm with significant adhesion. You have to cook them to kill them.
You're right - I think it was more-or-less to prevent norovirus and other forms of food poisoning.
Doesn't Norovirus mostly spread from people not washing their hands after they poop?
Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US
#118Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Produced using processes that we've tested for centuries. We're not sure they work, but we're sure they're not ridiculously dangerous. Contrast glyphosate.
>Produced using processes that we've tested for centuries. We're not sure they work, but we're sure they're not ridiculously dangerous. There's a bunch of stuff that we "tested for centuries" and thought were safe... until they weren't. see: lead, smoking, asbestos, cured meats.
You can still buy all of these things if you want. They come with the appropriate labeling.
I'm sorry if your concern is purely linguistic, but "organic" isn't a reserved word. Benzol is organic too. Organic laws are a thing too. Different kinds of organic.
Some people want to eat the same way people ate for millennia. Good for them. It's one of the benefits of living in a free market society. People have mistakenly thought a lot of things to be safe or dangerous, but if something has been working for thousands of years, even imperfectly, it carries a guarantee nobody else can provide.
Finally I don't understand why people are so angry at organic produce. I rarely buy it too, but what's the big deal? It sounds like they need to prove something. I don't get it.
Re: How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US
#120> 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…
Salad is an excuse to eat dressing.
Thats like saying french fries are an excuse for eating ketchup or other condiment. You would never eat/drink salad dressing by itself.