When Food Bites Back

Something You Ate
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A hamburger dripping with juices. A Caesar salad or chocolate mousse. Alfalfa sprouts on a veggie sandwich. These are hardly the killers from the latest horror movie at the nearby multiplex. On the other hand, maybe it's more of a murder mystery. Think of an upset stomach, nausea, fever—poison!

Food-borne illness strikes at least 76 million Americans each year and kills at least 5,000 of them. That means that about one in four Americans gets food poisoning each year. Have you been ignoring the threats in your own kitchen or lunch box?

You can get food poisoning when you eat food that contains certain types of bacteria or viruses. The food can be almost anything — meat, shellfish, ice cream, custard, apple cider, potato salad, stew—just so long as the germs have been allowed to grow.

Less Rare
Recent government research suggests that E. coli is present in about half of the cattle in the nation's feedlots during the summer. That's at least 10 times more common than previously thought.

E. coli testing is currently only done on ground beef after it is processed at meat packing plants. This testing program was only started after tainted hamburgers killed several children in Washington state in 1993. Based on the new findings, it is likely that E. coli testing will be done earlier in the packing process, so that infected meat is caught before it even enters the plant.

Make that burger well-done, please!

Perhaps the most widely talked about source of food poisoning is Escherichia coli, commonly called E. coli. E. coli is a bacteria. There are several strains of E. coli that can make you sick. The most common and dangerous is E. coli O157:H7, which poisons the body, damages the lining of the intestine, and causes hemorrhaging and kidney failure. In the last 10 years, E. coli outbreaks have been associated with such sources as undercooked fast-food hamburgers, apple cider, and unpasteurized milk.

    Read about a 1999 outbreak of E. coli bacteria in Illinois. And check out CNN.com's interactive guide to food poisoning while you're there.

    Earlier this year, Washington Post reporter Peter Perl wrote an investigative report on a deadly outbreak of Listeria poisoning, traced to hot dogs and deli meats produced at a plant in Michigan. Perl discusses his story, the deaths of 21 people, and the recall of 35 million pounds of meat on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered. (Requires RealPlayer plugin.)

    Hundreds of strains of E. coli bacteria are always present in the healthy human body. But what happens when you eat food tainted with the wrong strain of E. coli bacteria? Visit the Mayo Clinic Web site and read "Preventing a common type of food poisoning."

More Than You Know
Of course, sometimes you can get sick from something you've eaten and not even suspect that food was the culprit. Sickening food can look good, smell good, and even taste delicious. A chocolate mousse, for instance, contains uncooked eggs, which can harbor Salmonella. Would you suspect that the yummy dessert you ate yesterday made you feel so bad today, or would you write off your stomachache as stress-related or "a touch of the flu?"

This is the dilemma facing researchers when they try to determine the number of food poisoning incidents in the United States. People don't think they've had food poisoning. Even their doctors often misread the symptoms, if they hear about the illness at all.

A report in 1999 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 76 million people in the United States develop food-borne illnesses each year and that 325,000 require hospitalization. These estimates actually take into account underreporting of food poisoning. For instance, detailed studies of Salmonella outbreaks show that only 1 in 38 cases are reported to doctors and health officials. Numbers for other forms of food poisoning were also adjusted.

Raw Data, Not Raw Eggs
The CDC gathers, records, and interprets data on diseases in the United States. Take a look at this CDC report on food-borne diseases and try to answer the following questions:

  1. Which four states seem to have an unusually high number of food-borne disease outbreaks?

  2. Compare the data in Tables 17 and 21. Which six foods appear to cause the most disease outbreaks? How many fewer cases of food-borne disease were reported in 1997 compared to 1993? Express that number as a percent decrease.

  3. Which foods are most likely to harbor illness-producing Salmonella? E. coli?

  4. For 1997, what was the largest contributing factor in food-borne illness? For that factor, which bacteria or virus seemed to be most affected?

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Fight BAC
Many cases of food poisoning can be traced to unsafe food preparation and storage right in your own home. There are four basic rules to follow for a food-safe kitchen:

    Keep it clean. Wash your hands and work surfaces, such as a countertop or cutting board, using an antibacterial soap. Wash fruits and vegetables.

    Keep it separate. Don't use a cutting board to cut vegetables for the salad after you've used the same cutting board to trim chicken.

    Cook thoroughly. Different foods need to be heated to different temperatures to be cooked and to kill microorganisms.

    Chill promptly. Don't let the food cool to room temperature on the counter! Get it in the refrigerator quickly. As for your lunch, use an insulated lunch box and a coldpack. Improper cooling is the number one reported cause of food-borne illness in the United States.

Nuke Your Cukes?
Irradiation is the practice of exposing food products to a radiation source in order to kill bacteria, parasites, insects, etc. The FDA approved the use of irradiation to reduce the occurrence of disease-causing microorganisms in red meat, poultry, fruits and vegetables, and spices.

Irradiation is a controversial practice. Take a look at these two sites to get opposing views on the costs vs. benefits of irradiating foods:

What do you think? Do the benefits outweigh the possible risks?
Sometimes even the obvious solutions can be misleading. For instance, "natural" cleansers such as vinegar and baking soda are not effective against disease-causing organisms. You are better off cleaning kitchen and bathroom surfaces with disinfectants. But be careful of that damp kitchen sponge! It could easily harbor millions of bacteria and viruses. A little dish soap will not get rid of them! Use germ-resistant sponges, or allow sponges to dry between uses. You can also microwave your sponges or clean them with chlorine bleach.

    The FDA and the Partnership for Food Safety Education are sponsoring a public education program on food-borne illnesses called "Fight Bac"—short for "Fight Bacteria."

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