From Vox: E. coli outbreak 2018 – when is it safe to eat salad again? 

Living on the edge…

Interesting article below, particularly if you eat salads or any raw vegetables and fruits.

One of the people recently afflicted by E. coli is a 16-year-old Californian who had been eating salads daily in an effort to get healthier! Man, I feel like I’m playing Russian roulette now.

The article quotes an attorney who blames bagged leafy greens for much of the problem. I like to know what the CDC thinks about that theory.

From Vox:

A 2013 analysis by CDC of food poisoning cases between 1998 and 2008 found that leafy vegetables — salads and the like — caused almost a quarter of all food poisonings. That was more than any other food product, including dairy and poultry. Leafy vegetables were also the second most common cause of food poisoning-related hospitalizations.

“Back in the ’90s and early 2000s, E. coli cases linked to hamburgers represented almost all that I did,” said Bill Marler, one of America’s leading food safety attorneys. “Now it’s none of what I do. Now it’s just salads, raw vegetables.”

Michele Jay-Russell, a food safety researcher at the University of California Davis who has investigated salad-related poisoning outbreaks in the past, said the raw vegetables that are the most common culprits are basically all salad greens, but especially the chopped and bagged kind. “We really haven’t seen kale and some of the other greens [with contamination] problems, at least not yet. And romaine is one of the most common lettuce products that are used in salads.”

Source: Romaine E. coli outbreak 2018: when is it safe to eat salad again? – Vox