Food safety
Effect Measure
Category archives for Food safety
Playing chicken with drug resistant Salmonella
Posted by revere on May 11, 2010 Salmonella is an enteric pathogen that causes quite a lot of foodborne illness. I learned there were several species of Salmonella bacteria of which the cause of typhoid fever was called Salmonella typi. Spread via food and water it used to kill a lot of people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Nowadays all…
Honey, I shrunk the tariff!
Posted by revere on May 4, 2010 Everybody (including us) is talking about people crossing US borders illegally, but lots of things cross borders (pollution, wildlife, pathogens). Services cross borders whenever we reach a call center in Bangladore and of course so do commodities. Commodities like foodstuffs or medicines or toys may or may not be subject to regulations for safety and…
Food that makes you sick: not much progress
Posted by revere on April 17, 2010 It would be surprising if failure to fund local public health and neutering regulation would result in a decrease in foodborne illness. Alas, there is nothing surprising about CDC’s latest report on incidence of foodborne illness in the US. They put the best face on it they could, pointing to a decrease in E. coli…
The monster in the rawbar
Posted by revere on March 29, 2010 If you eat raw shellfish you are asking for trouble. I know, I know. There are people who love rawbars and think nothing is better than letting a raw oyster slide down their gullet. The FDA is warning consumers and retailers nationwide, though, that they might love nothing less that what could happen if they…
Salmonella, food safety and potato chips
Posted by revere on March 12, 2010 When last we visited the US food safety system during the Bush administration it was busy serving up peanut butter with a side of Salmonella. That one caused over 4 thousand product recalls, 700 Salmonella cases and at least 9 deaths. Now it’s Salmonella serovar Tennessee in hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), a common flavor enhancer…
Fish oil or snake oil?
Posted by revere on March 4, 2010 I don’t take vitamins or any other dietary supplements. I have another strategy. I eat a balanced diet. It was advice my father gave his patients about diet: everything in moderation. Moreover I don’t trust Big Pharma or many of their subsidiaries or the independent Little Pharmas in the dietary supplements industry, which is notoriously…
The dangers of weed
Posted by revere on February 7, 2010 I know families that if you visited them and found them laughing, confused, dizzy, thirsty and vomiting and apparently hallucinating you would think, “everything’s normal.” On a July night in suburban Maryland, however, an after dinner social call by a relative didn’t think it was normal at all and EMTs were called and six adults…
BPA cardiovascular findings replicated
Posted by revere on January 14, 2010 It’s been over a year since we discussed the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) article on bisphenol-A (BPA), a high volume chemical used in plastic components of food and drinks packaging and found in 90% of all Americans screened for the chemical. It is also a chemical that disrupts the endocrine system, a…
Potato salad, food poisoning and contortionists
Posted by revere on January 10, 2010 I discovered a stunning Youtube video via Boingboing, so consider this post just an excuse to show it to you. But as long as its title involves potato salad, I thought I’d reiterate some points we’ve made in the past about potato salad and food poisoning.
Bourbon, vodka and hangovers
Posted by revere on December 22, 2009 I went to medical school in the days when controls on human experimentation were not very robust (I understate). I think about that around Christmas time because one of the ways this penurious medical student used to make a few bucks was by volunteering for medical experiments (and eating Spaghetti-Os at 19 cents a can).…