Transcript Guess what`s coming to dinner?

Guess what's coming to
dinner?
E. coli and other nasty bugs make up to
seven million Canadians sick each year.
Here’s how to give these uninvited guests
the slip
By Jacqueline Hennessy
www.chatelaine.com
Guess what's coming to dinner?
•
•
Anne Nickerson doesn't flinch at words such as E. coli and
salmonella. And she's got more reason to than most.
Eleven years ago, her daughter, Lauren, suffered kidney
failure as a result of E. coli poisoning. The culprit? An
undercooked burger at a picnic. But even after more than a
decade of providing support – and a kidney – to her
daughter, this Vancouver mother has a simple message:
foodborne illness is pretty darn easy to avoid.
Cutting burgers in half to ensure that there's no pink inside
and that juices run clear is just one of the many tricks
Nickerson uses. It's a smart move, says Jeff Farber,
director of the bureau of microbial hazards at the food
directorate of Health Canada: "Everyone from farm to
government to table has a role to play in food safety." Still,
it's estimated that up to seven million Canadians fall victim
to bacteria such as campylobacter, listeria and E. coli every
year. And while many think they're only suffering from the
flu – since symptoms are similar – a small percentage can
go on to experience chronic conditions such as arthritis or
paralysis, even death, making it ever more crucial to know
which bacteria hide where – and how to prevent them from
invading your favourite foods. "You don't need to be afraid
of foodborne illness," says Nickerson, "just informed."
Cantaloupes
• You can sniff them, squeeze them,
even
look upon their cup size with
envy, but
don't ever cut into a cantaloupe without
washing it first. The reason? We eat it raw
and it grows on the ground: the same ground
where farmers may spread uncomposted
manure or contaminated irrigation water, or
where birds poop. Plus, cantaloupe has a
rough netted surface that can trap bacteria.
That's why in 2001 and 2002, Mexican
cantaloupes laced with salmonella sickened
many Canadians and killed two people in the
U.S.
Bug busting - Cantaloupes
• Choose cantaloupes free of cracks and bruises,
which could allow bacteria living on the surface
to penetrate the flesh inside.
• Before cutting, scrub the whole fruit thoroughly
under hot water with a clean produce brush.
• Wash your hands, cutting board and utensils
before and after handling cantaloupe. Once
cantaloupe is cut, refrigerate it within two hours.
Cooked Rice
• Look at it: so inoffensive and polite. But turn your
back on it and rice isn't so nice. That's because
a bacterium in soil, known as bacillus cereus,
loves to hitch a ride on this grain and pepper it
with bacteria-producing spores. The catch is,
cooking can't destroy the spores, and if you
leave your cooked rice out more than a couple
of hours, the bacteria may not only flourish but
also pump out poisons that can cause severe
stomach cramps, nausea and diarrhea.
Bug Busting – Cooked Rice
• Refrigerate your
leftover rice
immediately to keep it
below 4C.
• Cook rice with meal –
not ahead of time!
Chicken Nuggets
• One might expect breasts to attract all the
attention, but it's actually the nuggets that have
been making headlines. In 2003, frozen nuggets
were linked to an outbreak of salmonellosis in
B.C., where more than a dozen people became
ill. Nuggets and strips aren't more contaminated
than any other chicken shape – their preformed
white insides are just better at fooling us into
believing they've been precooked, when in fact
they're often raw or only partially cooked.
Bug Busting – Chicken Nuggets
• Always follow the cooking instructions. If
you throw away the box, keep the
directions on your fridge door.
• Bake chicken nuggets in the oven until
they're steaming hot on the inside.
Chicken
• Hey, who doesn't love chicken? Problem is, so do salmonella and E.
coli, which were found hanging out on the carcasses of 21 per cent
of broiler chickens and 20 to 23 per cent of young turkeys in a
Canadian Food Inspection Agency survey. Chicken is also a magnet
for campylobacter, a leading cause of foodborne illness in Canada.
• And those free-range birds aren't necessarily the cleaner flower
children of the chicken world. "Bacteria will be just as happy growing
on organic or free-range birds," says Doug Powell, director of the
Food Safety Network at the University of Guelph in Ontario.
• But at least organic poultry says no to antibiotics, which can wreak
havoc upon the good bacteria that keep the bad in check, says
molecular geneticist Roger Wheatcroft of the food research program
at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. If you become infected by one
of the 12 per cent of chickens – conventional, not organic –
contaminated with antibiotic-resistant E. coli, you'll have fewer
treatment options.
Bug Busting - Chicken
• Choose well-wrapped chicken from the bottom of the
case, where the temperature is coolest. Be sure to
check the best-before date.
• Protect yourself and other purchases by bagging poultry before
putting it in your cart.
• Ask that your chicken be placed in a separate bag from your produce
in case the poultry juices leak, says Catherine Semple, a food
microbiologist at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
• When you arrive home, if the packaging of your poultry has been
punctured, transfer the chicken to a resealable bag or container.
Keep it up to three days in the refrigerator.
• Don't waste time bathing your bird in the sink. You won't wash off all
the bacteria. Instead, pop it directly in its roasting pan. Cook whole
chicken until it reaches an internal temperature of 83C; chicken
pieces, 77C.
Cold Cuts
• Cold meats are eaten, well, cold. And nothing
tolerates the cold better than listeria, which can
grow in climates such as the one inside your
fridge or grocer's deli case. According to Kalidas
Shetty, a professor of food science at the
University of Massachusetts in Amherst, listeria
may hang out on the knives, slicers and cutting
boards of meat processors and delis and
potentially contaminate any meat that touches
them.
Bug Busting – Cold Cuts
• Choose delis where business
is steady so the meat
doesn't stick around long.
• Only buy as much as you can
eat within two days.
• Check the best-before date
on pre-packaged cuts.
Eggs
• Times have changed since Mom made her caesar
salad with raw egg. "We now know that salmonella
can be found inside an egg and not just on the shell,"
says Farber. Although the likelihood of salmonella
turning up inside your egg is extremely slim – an
estimated one in a million – based on the number of
eggs produced each year that still leaves almost
6,000 eggs that could contain salmonella surprise.
Bug Busting - Eggs
• If you're shopping in a large grocery chain, look for the
term "grade…" on the carton, which ensures the eggs
have passed through a federally registered grading
station. You're best to ask to see the original box at
smaller markets, since hobby farmers may reuse old
cartons. According to Jim Chan, manager of Toronto
Public Health's food safety program, you'll know the
ones that haven't gone through this safeguard by the
blood, feces, feathers and number of cracks sometimes
found on ungraded eggs at farmer's markets or small
grocers.
• Always eat eggs by their best-before date. Cartons that
don't have an expiry date are another tipoff that the eggs
haven't been inspected.
Ground Meat
• It's convenient. It's cheap. And it's as
attractive to bugs as a Jungle Gym is to
third graders. The reason? Ground meat,
including everything from turkey to pork,
has so much more surface area for
bacteria to play on and multiply.
Bug Busting – Ground Meat
• Check the best-before date(today's, preferably)and look for the
freshest meat. Freeze raw meat right away or cook within 24 hours
of purchase.
• Check the thermometer in the supermarket meat case. "If stored
above 4C, many of these bugs can multiply, doubling every 20
minutes," says Rose Soneff, community nutrition co-ordinator for
public health, Interior Health, in Kamloops, B.C.
• For the drive home, stash a small cooler in your trunk or back seat to
store meat.
• Wash your hands before and after handling any meat, eggs or
produce: scrub in warm soapy water for 30 seconds. Then dry with a
paper towel.
• Make your burgers no more than 1.5 centimetres thick or they'll burn
before their internal temperature gets hot enough(71C for beef; 80C
for poultry)to kill all bugs.
• Use an instant-read food thermometer
Raw Sprouts
• Between 1995 and 2001, alfalfa sprouts infected
at least 375 Canadians with salmonella – and
health-food types have been crying in their kashi
ever since. Sprouts loom on the food-risk radar
for several reasons: first, because we eat them
raw; second, because their seed coats have tiny
cracks and crevices that can harbour bacteria,
making them difficult to wash thoroughly; and
third, their warm, wet growing conditions are the
pathogenic equivalent of dimming the lights and
throwing on a Barry White cd – they get bugs
multiplying like crazy.
Bug Busting – Raw Sprouts
• Canada's Food Safety Network advises
that the only safe sprout is a fully cooked
one. If you must indulge, Health Canada
recommends them only for healthy
teenagers and adults: look for fresh crisp
alfalfa sprouts with the bud attached, and
avoid those that are dark or mustysmelling.
Oysters
• Imagine you were an oyster, sucking in water all day to filter your
favourite food, plankton. Now imagine getting a daily side dish of
toxins from algae and bacteria from such things as human sewage –
all of which concentrate inside you. Nice, huh? This shellfish is getting
its revenge through norovirus(think Norwalk), hepatitis A virus and
vibrio bacteria, a species that, according to Farber, frolicks in summer
off our coasts and makes its way to us through raw or undercooked
shellfish.
• Bug Busting:
• • "It's such a high-risk activity that it's just common sense not to eat
raw oysters," says Farber. But if you must eat them, Chan suggests
buying them at a reputable store or restaurant with federally approved
shellfish. Look for popular restaurants that have been around for a
while – if they were making people sick, they wouldn't be in business.
Bug Busting - Oyters
• "It's such a high-risk activity that it's just
common sense not to eat raw oysters,"
says Farber. But if you must eat them,
Chan suggests buying them at a reputable
store or restaurant with federally approved
shellfish. Look for popular restaurants that
have been around for a while – if they
were making people sick, they wouldn't be
in business.
Prewashed Salad
• Triple-washed greens aren't like a bag of Doritos
you can just dump into a bowl. Even though the
product is prewashed, not all food handlers
practise good personal hygiene and can
contaminate produce during packaging,
according to officials at the Newfoundland and
Labrador Public Health Association. A series of
E. coli, hepatitis A and salmonella outbreaks in
the U.S., traced to prewashed lettuce, proves
the point.
Bug Busting – Prewashed Salad
• Wash greens one leaf at a time under running
water: the friction from the moving water is better
at removing bacteria and chemical residues than
just soaking.