"bacteria" news and stories

You might want to think twice before rinsing off raw chicken in your kitchen sink.

Recent studies by the British Food Standards Agency show that rinsing chicken can potentially spread bacteria on work surfaces in a three-foot radius, The Daily Telegraph reported. The report says up to 75 percent of consumers wash poultry before consuming it.

The FSA says 65 percent of raw chicken is contaminated with campylobacer, the most common cause of food poisoning, the paper reported. And while cooking will kill the bug, Campylobacter causes more than 300,000 cases of food poisoning and 15,000 hospitalizations a year in England and Wales.

More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile (C. diff), a bacteria that can cause intestinal distress and, very rarely, death. About 40 percent of the cooked products and nearly 48 percent of the ready-to-eat products showed evidence of C. diff. Nearly 30 percent of the tainted samples of ground beef, pork and turkey and ready-to-eat meats were identical or closely related to a super-toxic strain of C. diff that's a growing problem in hospitals across the country.

But there are no proven cases of humans getting C. diff from food; it's almost always hospital transmitted. And if food-person transmission is possible, it's not known if the levels of bacteria in the supermarket meat are high enough to cause infection. But it does seem to add to the growing evidence that overuse of antibiotics, both at home and in meat processing plants, are leading to nasty superbugs. Yet another reason to eat sustainably-raised hormone and antibiotic-free meat.

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After some comments in my post about shrimp cocktail, I began to think about kitchen fears. Shayna covered "risky eating" in April, but what about how you run your kitchen and how you prepare your food? Are you an Alton Brown, who treats raw chicken like an infectious disease with his gloves, sterilizing, and paranoia? Are you like a Jamie Oliver, who will run ribs, chicken, and lamb through a barbecue sauce, and then run his finger through it to lick and taste? Maybe somewhere in between?

I am, by no means, going to refute the possible dangers of bacteria. Everyone's immune systems are different, and one person's healthy, bacteria-filled oasis is another's stomach-bugged hell. That being said, I'm happy to say (knock on wood) that it's never been an issue for me. In my early cooking days, I would try to keep things clean, but would always get a little lazy with my chicken/meats -- until I dated someone who looked at my kitchen practices with horror. I got more particular and careful, especially when cooking for others, but when I'm only cooking for me, I'm still fairly lax.

And I see no reason to change my habits. I've never had food poisoning, and I have only been sick a few times in the last 10 years. It's hard not to buy into the notion that exposure is great for building resistance when my lifestyle has kept me ridiculously healthy.

How about you?

And we're not talking about your mental health because you haven't looked at anything but spreadsheets for four days. We're talking about your physical health.

As you wind down your day in front of your computer sitting at your desk, take a moment and look down at your keyboard. You could be looking at something that is dirtier than the toilet seat in the bathroom down the hall. This means eating lunch in front of your computer might be a health hazard!

According to British microbiologist James Francis four of 33 keyboards he tested were potential health hazards and one had germs at a level five times higher than that found on the toilet seat.

Makes me want to dip my laptop in a bleach solution and never eat at my desk again.

Of course, that's not possible when your boss's demands are forcing you to wolf down a sandwich at your desk through lunch. Just make sure to wash your hands, don't let other co-workers touch your keyboard, and my best advice is to eat lunch with utensils, not your hands.

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When you go out to eat, it's often the case that the water, iced tea or soda you order comes with a wedge of lemon perched on the rim of the glass. However, according to the research done by scientists at New Jersey's Passaic County Community College, you could be endangering your health by dropping that lemon slice into your glass.

They sampled 76 lemon wedges from 21 different restaurants and found that nearly 70% produced some form of microbial growth in the lab. In total, they were able to find 25 different forms of bacteria and yeasts on the sampled lemon wedges. It is not known what effect this is having on the consumers who come into contact with these contaminated lemon wedges, however, it could be causing problems for people who have weakened immune systems.

(Oops, we seem to have posted about this just a few weeks ago. Please excuse the duplication)!

[via Dr. Mercola]

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