From the upcoming January edition of Consumer Reports Magazine, disheartening news about the pathogen content of broiler chickens. More than 60% were infected with either salmonella or campylobacter. If this makes you sad, at least it’s an improvement over 2007, where 80% of broilers were contaminated.

These are crazy high numbers. It did not matter if the chickens were from top brands like Perdue and Foster Farms, or from smaller players, or even supermarket brands.

What you need to know:

Salmonella is a bacteria. According to the Mayo Clinic, there are more than 2,000 varieties of salmonella, but only about a dozen of them cause illnesses in people. Most cause severe diarrhea. The feistier ones result in typhoid fever, which can be deadly.

Campylobacter literally mean twisted bacteria. It produces cramps, stomach pains, diarrhea, and dysentery. According to the CDC, In persons with compromised immune systems, campylobacter occasionally spreads to the bloodstream and causes a serious life-threatening infection.

Consumer Reports says that each year, salmonella and campylobacter from chicken and other food sources infect 3.4 million Americans, send 25,500 to hospitals, and kill about 500!

What to do at the supermarket:

There’s not much you can do at the supermarket because it’s impossible to know by looking at a piece of chicken or meat if it has been contaminated or not.

Rather, at home you should take every measure to protect yourself. It’s not that difficult. Make sure you always separate between raw and cooked product, as well as plates and utensils used with each. Always cook the chicken to at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Use a meat thermometer to make sure you’ve reached the right temperature.

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The December Edition of Consumer Reports, already out, is bringing BPA, a controversial chemical, back to the headlines. The non-profit publisher, Consumers Union, tested various canned foods for BPA and found alarmingly high values in daily staples such as tuna, beans and soups. You can read more about it here.

This is a good opportunity to get reacquainted with a chemical we  all consume in some form, whether we know it, like it, or not.

What you need to know:
1. Bisphenol-A  is a chemical compound used as a building block of several polymers and polycarbonates that in turn are found in plastic bottles and cans. Which means all of us are exposed to tiny amounts, whether drinking canned juice, milk from a baby-bottle, or any other product sold in a plastic container or a can.

2. The chemical has been sold since the 1940’s and starting in the 1960’s has been lining the insides of cans in order to extend shelf life.

3. 7 billion pounds of BPA are produced annually, for use in food packaging, PVC water pipes, electronics, and more.

4. In 2008, more than 22 billion cans for food and more than 100 billion cans for beer and soft drinks were produced with BPA.

5. BPA behaves like the hormone estrogen once it enters the body and disturbs the normal working of certain genes. Estrogen mimicking chemicals like BPA are potentially harmful even at very low doses, such as those found in plastic bottles and cans.

6. Toxicity questions have been around for decades, raising safety issue, especially for babies who ingest a proportionally larger amount due to their small size. Potential problems include hyperactivity, learning disabilities, brain damage, and immune deficiencies.

7. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculated that people consume 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight every day over the course of a lifetime. Over 40 studies have found adverse health effects in rats given less than one hundredth of that amount!

8. Over 200 animal studies that have linked BPA consumption in tiny amounts to a host of reproductive problems, brain damage, immune deficiencies, metabolic abnormalities, and behavioral oddities like hyperactivity, learning deficits and reduced maternal willingness to nurse offspring.

9. In 2008, Canada added BPA to its list of toxic substances and plans are to ban BPA from all baby bottles.

10. The FDA has zigzagged on BPA safety. In August 2008 it deemed BPA safe. However, in December 2008, the FDA’s own advisory board accused the FDA of weighing 2 industry-backed studies much more heavily than the hundreds of other independent studies. The FDA’s excuse: all the other studies did not meet the FDA’s guidelines for determining safety for human consumption, did not provide raw data, and a host of other “reasons”.

11. In March 2009, six manufacturers announced that they would voluntarily stop manufacturing bottles with BPA. Playtex Products, Gerber, Evenflo, Avent America, Dr. Brown and Disney First Years decided to so in order to preempt legal action being considered at the time by several state attorney generals.

12. In May 2009, Chicago became the first city to ban sales of baby bottles and sippy cups with BPA. Denmark became the first European country to do the same.

13. Many other European countries conducted reviews in the past 2 years but decided to maintain BPA’s safe status for now.

14. If you think you’re safe, 93% of the population has BPA in their bodies, according to urine sampling conducted by the Center for Disease Control, CDC.

15. There’s hope – Many Japanese manufacturers voluntarily stopped using BPA in 1997. In a 2003 study, BPA levels in people’s urine had dropped by 50%.

What to do at the supermarket:
Here are some tips on how to reduce your family’s  BPA intake:
1. if you have a baby or toddler, purchase BPA free plastic bottles.
2. If microwaving formula, do so in a glass bottle.
3. Opt for fresh or frozen products less than canned.
4. Drink tap water instead of bottled water

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The CDC released a report earlier this week with disheartening news -

No U.S. state is meeting national objectives for consumption of fruits and vegetables, according to the first report to provide state–by–state data about fruit and vegetable consumption and policies that may help Americans eat more fruits and vegetables.

only 33 percent of adults meet the recommendation for fruit consumption and 27 percent get the recommended servings of vegetables.

Children and teens are doing even worse. Here’s what a 2007 survey of 100,000 high schoolers found:

32 percent report eating at least two servings of fruit daily and 13 percent say they eat at least three servings of vegetables each day.

This works out to only 1 in 10 teens getting enough fruits and vegetables in their diet. And we’re surprised that there’s an obesity epidemic going on?

What you need to know:

There are several reasons we’re not getting enough of these vitamin powerhouses:

1. In many cases its cheaper to buy a processed snack than a fruit.

2. It is also more convenient to pack a processed snack in a lunch bag than a fruit (try to see what a pear in a kids backpack looks like by lunchtime…)

3. School vending machines offer processed snacks, not carrots and apples.

4. Seen any TV and billboard ads for fruits and vegetables lately?

5. Sweet and Savory snacks are much tastier for many kids (and adults).

6. It takes time to prepare a fruit (peel an orange) or vegetable (bake a zucchini) for consumption. Much easier to rip open a box/bag and start munching.

What to do at the supermarket:

It’s true that in some case fruits and vegetables can be expensive compared to highly processed junk. Here are some suggestions:

1. Buy seasonal. Fruits and vegetables in season are usually cheaper.

2. Buy frozen. Frozen veggies maintain almost all the nutritional value as fresh ones.

3. Buy canned. but watch out for the high sodium content some canned vegs carry and the high sugar content of syrupy fruit.

4. Expand your horizons. Buy some cheaper vegetables you haven’t tried yet. Beet carpaccio, anyone?

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Worrying numbers from a government conference in Washington DC this week:

Obese Americans — those who are 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight — cost the country an estimated $147 billion in weight-related medical bills in 2008, double what it was a decade ago, a new study shows.

Overall, an obese patient has $4,871 in medical bills a year compared with $3,442 for a patient at a healthy weight.

Read USA Today Article…

The Center for Disease Control and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are sharing  alarming findings with elected and appointed public policy makers as well as federal, state and local public health leaders in a 3 day conference dedicated to obesity prevention.

What you need to know:

The percentage of obese adults in the US grew from 15% in 1980 to 34% in 2006 (more than double).

About 34% of adults — more than 72 million — in the USA were obese in 2006, up from 23% in 1994, according to government data. Two-thirds of people in this county are overweight or obese. Obesity increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, several types of cancer and other diseases.

Clearly, something is broken with the system that feeds us.

What does this have to do with President Obama’s health care reform, all over the news these days?

The reform is an important overhaul no doubt. With  costs soaring, and health care becoming a luxury instead of a basic right for many Americans, there are many corrections required.

One of the ways to improve health care is through prevention. For example, preventing obesity.

This means stepping up to the collective plate and taking some radical steps:

For one, aligning the price of junk food with its real cost. Not the cost at the cash register, but the cost 20 years down the line at the hospital. (If you are thinking Soda Tax, this is just one option. Another is eliminating silly subsidies for corn that have flooded the market with high fructose corn syrup, and extra fat livestock).

Another measure is substantially restricting junk food advertising to children.

Lastly, the government can mandate clear, easy to understand food labels. Today’s labels are confusing. They allow manufacturers to obfuscate the true nutritional quality of a processed food item through flimsy health claims and marketing hype.

What to do at the supermarket:

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the government to help you. While you can certainly have your voice heard by writing to your state and federal representatives, a much more effective tool is to vote with your pocketbook.

Vote at the supermarket by choosing unprocessed foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, low fat dairy and meat, and whole grains.

Vote by limiting your spending on junk foods.

Vote by cutting your spending on soft drinks to zero.

You’ll not only improve your health almost immediately, you’ll save yourself $1400 per year in health care costs down the road.

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The biggest headline developing over the weekend is the spread of swine flu from Mexico to the rest of the world.

Eating pork and pork products will not infect you with swine flu. Like all flus, this one is transmitted by the sneezing or coughing of or physical proximity to an infected person.

However, could there be a relationship between this flu outbreak and the way pork is raised for human consumption?

Read more…

Image via Wikipedia

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has just published the results of a sodium survey conducted in 2005-2006. Sodium (40%) and Chlorine (60%) are the two elements making up table salt.

High consumption of sodium can increase the risk for hypertension, which in turn increases the risk for heart disease and stroke, the first and third leading causes of death in the United States.

According to the CDC,  29% of U.S. adults have hypertension, and another 28% have prehypertension. That’s over half of us with high blood pressure!

Our average sodium intake is 3,436 mg/day(1.5 teaspoons), a whopping 50% higher than the USDA’s recommended 2,300 mg (1 teaspoon) daily allowance for healthy adults.

The recommendation for those in specific groups (people with hypertension, middle-aged and older adults, and all blacks) is to consume no more than 1,500 mg/day of sodium (about 2 thirds of a teaspoon).

Turns out that the special groups are not a small minority, but in fact the majority of consumers -  the lower sodium recommendation was applicable to 69.2% of U.S. adults.

What to do at the supermarket:

70% of the sodium in a Western diet comes from processed food (restaurants and prepared supermarket food). The rest is added while cooking, at the table, or is found naturally in foods. So if you really want to cut down on your sodium, start reducing processed foods from your diet.

Buying basic ingredients and cooking at home, lets you control the amount of salt added to a dish. If you find home cooking to be too difficult, look at the nutrition panel of prepared foods you buy and opt for low sodium versions (less than 400mg per serving).

If you are over 40 or suffer from high blood pressure or African American, you need to be extra careful.

Here is a list of 9 tips for reducing your sodium intake.

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In one sentence: Err on the side of caution – don’t buy a product with peanuts for the time being. If it hasn’t been recalled yet, it may be tomorrow.

As parents and slightly paranoid consumers, when someone tells us everything is fine, we worry. If that someone is an investment manager or the FDA, we worry A LOT.

While just 2 weeks ago consumers were assured that the PBS outbreak was limited, and that they need to watch out for only a few items, it now appears that almost any product containing peanuts in various forms  is being recalled. This is partly due to new findings about the subpar sanitary conditions at the supplier manufacturing plant, which included mold, slime, pests, and rodents. Yikes!

Peanut Corporation of America  expanded its recall to ALL products it manufactured at its plant in the past 2 years! The expanded recall includes dry roasted peanuts,  oil roasted peanuts, granulated peanuts, peanut meal, peanut butter and peanut paste. The firm has supplied hundreds of manufacturers across the country, so the results of this recall have had and will continue to have a ripple effect.

Some previous recalls are being expanded by manufacturers to additional products, and more states. The recal list is growing, almost by the hour. The FDA has contacted over 350 manufacturers concerning possible contamination.

But knowing how underfunded and understaffed the FDA is, does not add confidence that the parents are receiving timely advice. Nor does the fact that recalls are voluntary, which means manufacturers have the last say, instead of the FDA mandating a recall on day one of the outbreak.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you spot someone walking into a supermarket with a list of the 500+ products being recalled in order to find one that isn’t, please let us know. Right now,  parents are reading food labels carefully. May are avoiding anything with the word peanut in the ingredient list. Proceed with caution.

Here’s the Current Recall List: Read more…

More updates on the salmonella / peanut butter outbreak. According to USA Today:

Peanut butter and peanut paste manufactured by the Peanut Corp. of America (PCA) has been tied to the salmonella outbreak that has sickened 501 people in 43 states and is believed to have contributed to eight deaths.

Read the article…

Half of the outbreak victims are children under the age of 18. Children and the elderly are especially prone to sickness as a result of salmonella contamination.

A small consolation – The outbreak seems to finally be slowing down in the past day or two.

Here’s the Current Recall List: Read more…

photo: Elliott Minor/Associated Press

The current salmonella / peanut butter crisis has caused 500 illnesses and 7 deaths, with more product recalls every day (see updated list at the bottom of this post). The New York Times reports that the processing facility in Georgia was repeatedly cited for unsanitary conditions, as recently as 2007:

Inspections of the plant in Blakely, Ga., by the state agriculture department found areas of rust that could flake into food, gaps in warehouse doors large enough for rodents to get through, unmarked spray bottles and containers, and numerous violations of other practices designed to prevent food contamination. The plant, owned by Peanut Corporation of America of Lynchburg, Va., has been shut down. Read more…

Is the FDA doing enough?

Is the government, and more specifically the FDA, doing its best to protect us from poisoned food? With the resources at hand, maybe. But perhaps it’s not enough. Here’s why, based on the handling of the current PBS (peanut butter salmonella) situation:

The FDA can only recommend product recalls, not mandate them. And so, it is at the discretion of each and every manufacturer to decide if, what, and when to recall. Why do consumers need to hear each day of 10 new products being recalled, instead of having all 500 (or more) recalled immediately?

Salmonella can survive in peanut butter’s fatty environment for months. This means that people may have bought a product last month, that will be recalled tomorrow or in 5 weeks.  Worried consumers are not buying any peanut butter based products now, and this is ultimately going to hurt the food manufacturers. Had all potentially suspect products been recalled immediately, shoppers could continue to buy other products safe and sound.

Corporate responsibility

As of yesterday the FDA has singled out one Georgia factory as the source of salmonella. All companies who have received peanut butter and peanut paste from this factory in the past 6 months should immediately issue a recall on all products they have produced with the tainted peanut butter. Each of these companies surely must have records tracking which peanut butter went where, right? Right ?!

Could this tracking information be  incomplete, missing, or simply non-existent?

In the industrialized food reality of today, where a product can have 35 ingredients sourced from 20 suppliers in 12 countries, a good logistical database is a must. We certainly have the technology. Do corporations have the will?

Consumer Information

The FDA’s website is a good source of information on the current situation. However, for a crisis that is evolving literally by the hour, consumers have come to expect more frequent updates.

Hello (!), this is a post web 2.0 society – Youtube videos, twitter updates, facebook, and at a bare minimum – show us pictures of the recalled products, nobody can remember some of these products’ full names.

Here’s the Current Recall List:

46 Recalls, over 150 products as of early Saturday morning Jan 24.

• Whole Foods Market – “Carob Energee Nuggets”
• Amway Global – NUTRILITE Energy Bars
• Brent and Sam’s – Archer Farms Brand Cookies
• Brent and Sam’s – Sam’s Choice Brand Cookies
• Trader Joe’s – Trader Joe’s Peanut Butter Chewy Coated & Drizzled Granola Bars, Nutty Chocolate Chewy Coated & Drizzled Granola Bars, Sutter’s Formula Cookies
• Parker Products – Peanut Butter Products (bulk)
• Arbonne International – Figure 8 Peanut Butter Chews
• Jimmy’s Cookies – Peanut Butter Cookies
• Perry’s Ice Cream Company – 2 more Peanut Butter Ice Cream Products
• Kroger -  Additional Select Ice Cream Product
• General Nutrition Centers – GNC Triflex Peanut Butter Soft Chews
• Chef Jay’s – Tri-O-Plex Products
• Rain Creek Baking Corp – Peanut Butter Turtles, Peanut Butter Baskets, Peanut Butter Princesses
• South Bend Chocolate Company – Extends Nationwide Recall of Candy
• Nash Finch – Bakery Products With Peanut Butter
• Aspen Hills, Inc. – Cookie Dough Products
• Best Brands Corp. – Peanut Butter Frozen Cookie Dough
• Lovin Oven, LLC – Health Valley Organic Peanut Crunch Chewy Granola Bars
• Landies Candies – Peanut Butter Filled Chocolates
• Weis Markets – Weis Quality (WQ) Cheese Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers , WQ Toasted Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers
• Blanton’s Candies – Peanut Butter Sticks
• Dinners Ready Meridian – Asian Marinated Flank Steak, Indonesian Chicken – Chicken Satay Prepared Meals
• Boca Grande Foods – POCO PAC, GRANDE GOURMET Peanut Butter Products
• Premier Nutrition – TWISTED and TITAN Branded Bars Containing Peanut Butter
• NutriSystem – Peanut Butter Granola Bar
• Ready Pac Foods – Trader Joe’s, Eating Right branded products
  
• PetSmart – Grreat Choice® Dog Biscuits
• Nature’s Path – Peanut Butter Optimum Energy Bars
• Country Maid – Classic Breaks® Peanut Butter Cookie Dough
• Evening Rise Bread Co. -  Peanut Butter Cookies and Bars
• Clif Bar -  CLIF® and LUNA® Branded Bars
• Kroger – Select Ice Cream Products
• Abbott Nutrition -  ZonePerfect® Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars, ZonePerfect® Peanut Toffee Bars, NutriPals™ Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars
• Meijer – Peanut Butter Crackers, Ice Cream
• Peanut Corporation of America Expands Nationwide Recall of Peanut Butter
• Wal-Mart -  Bakery Brand Peanut Butter Cookies
• Lofthouse – Peanut Butter Cookies, Chuck’s Chunky Peanut Butter Cookies, Pastries Plus Gourmet Cookies
• Food Lion – Bake Shop Peanut Butter Cookies
• South Bend Chocolate Company – Candies Containing Peanut Butter
• McKee Foods – Little Debbie® Peanut Butter Toasty, Peanut Butter Cheese Sandwich Crackers
• Perry’s Ice Cream – Select Peanut Butter Ice Cream Products
• Hy-Vee Inc. – Bakery Products With Peanut Butter
• Peanut Corporation of America Expands Nationwide Recall of Peanut Butter
• Kellogg Company – Austin® and Keebler® Branded Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers, Snack-Size Packs of Famous Amos® And Keebler® Soft Batch Peanut Butter Cookies
• Peanut Corporation of America – Peanut Butter (bulk packages)
• King Nut – Peanut Butter (bulk packages)

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