Some eye-popping food-safety stats from the Economist:

1. There are 26,000 food poisoning cases per 100,000 Americans, every year!

2. Compare that to only 3,400 cases in the UK, and just 1,200 in France (about one tenth, and one twentieth, compared to the US).

3. Every year 76 million Americans become ill with food poisoning. That’s 25% chance each one of us will get sick this year.

4. Of those contracting some ailment, 325,000 end up in a hospital, while most others get over it in a day or 2.

5. However, five thousand Americans die every year from food poisoning.

6. Insufficient food safety is a $35 Billion drag on the US economy.

Why is the US a tenfold more dangerous place to eat than Europe?

Some of the reasons offered in the article are “less eating out, less prepared meals, and less hamburgers” in the UK, but the real reason may lie elsewhere.

This is because the top products involved in food poisoning are actually leafy greens and several other unprocessed foods consumed at home.

There is hope, both on the regulatory and the entrepreneurial fronts. The FDA may soon be empowered by Congress to perform more routine checkups on producers and packers. And companies like Yottamark and FoodLogiq are creating barcodes that enable consumers to trace the route of their spinach all the way back to the farm where it was originally grown.

What to do at the supermarket:

Always thoroughly wash your fruits and vegetables thoroughly before serving. If you prepare meats often, invest in a food thermometer to make sure your cut gets hot enough at the center before serving.

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The consumer watchdog group CSPI published [PDF] a provocative list of 10 healthy foods that have been involved in large scale contamination in the past few years:

1. LEAFY GREENS: 363 outbreaks involving 13,568 reported cases of illness
2. EGGS: 352 outbreaks , 11,163 illness
3. TUNA: 268 outbreaks , 2341 illness
4. OYSTERS: 132 outbreaks , 3409 illness
5. POTATOES: 108 outbreaks , 3659 illness
6. CHEESE: 83 outbreaks , 2761 illness
7. ICE CREAM: 74 outbreaks , 2594 illness
8. TOMATOES: 31 outbreaks , 3292 illness
9. SPROUTS: 31 outbreaks , 2022 illness
10. BERRIES: 25 outbreaks , 3397 illness

The group is not trying to scare us away from these foods, it is simply pointing out a fact that the FDA must do a better job of enforcing safety regulations on growers, shippers, and manufacturers. The FDA should be given the tools by law:

the United States Senate should follow the House and pass legislation that reforms our fossilized food safety laws

What you need to know:

Food Safety is something we take for granted when everything is OK. But a rushed trip to the emergency room, fevers, cramps, bloody stools, or worse remind us how fragile we are vs tiny contaminants that find their way into our food. And the grave responsibility of the entire supply chain in providing us safe food.

While we believe that most companies try to maintain high standards of safety, there is always room for improvement. Unfortunately, many times the pressure to cut costs is at odds with additional safety measures.

Just this past January the great peanut butter recall exposed how easy it is for one bad apple (or in this case peanut) to infiltrate hundreds of food items.

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We often complain about the FDA’s weakness as the regulating body dealing with the food industry. Thankfully, the new FDA leadership is starting to add more bark and bite. Here are two steps forward:

1. The FDA is doing a huge Internet survey of 43,000 people to learn about Barriers to Food Label Use . Apparently, there is a decline in label use in the “under 34″ age bracket. According to the FDA the purpose of the study is to explore possible explanations for food label use and non-use among U.S. consumers. The information collected from the study will be used to help to improve consumer understanding and use of the food label.

We would like to see the FDA take a bolder step, of course, and improve the requirements for food labels. Some easy examples – require manufacturers to specify how much added sugar is present. Or provide more realistic serving sizes, a serving of 2 Oreo cookies is not logical. And how about getting rid of those silly health claims, like that of a sugary cereal reducing cholesterol levels.  For a full list, see a previous Fooducate post – 16 Ways to Improve Nutrition Labels.

2. The FDA has issued a rule that requires food manufacturers to notify the government agency within 24 hours if they discover a contamination that poses a health threat to consumers. It may surprise you that manufacturers don’t report this immediately or that up to now companies could have taken weeks to let the FDA know about a health issue. But that’s the sad reality. Hopefully the new measure will help stop the spread of food borne illnesses at an earlier stage, potentially saving lives and suffering.

Kudos, FDA. There’s still much more work ahead. Don’t let the food industry bullies lobbies stop you from protecting consumers.

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This is just too weird.

A Florida man who purchased a multipack of Diet Pepsi at a local Sam’s Club was quite surprised to discover something dead inside the can. he sent the mass to the FDA and after careful inspection, the government agency has concluded that it was a frog.

How did a frog get into a can of Pepsi?

The FDA sent inspectors to visit the Pepsi manufacturing plant, but they cam back empty handed. According to Pepsi, “The FDA conducted a thorough inspection of our Orlando facility and found no cause for concern. In this case, the FDA simply was unable to determine when or how the specimen entered the package.”

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Could cocaine be the secret behind Red Bull’s success?

Six German states have banned Red Bull after

the food safety agency in North Rhine-Westphalia (LIGA) state found 0.4 micrograms per litre in the drink.

While Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) and the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection both said the level did not pose a threat to public safety, it was thought more states may join the ban.

Read more…

What you need to know:

We wouldn’t fret about the use of a decocainised coca leaf extract in Red Bull. Coca leaves have been used in South America for centuries. The tiny amounts of extract used in energy drink should be the least of your worries.

The real ingredients to worry about in Red Bull and other energy drinks are caffeine and sugar. Highly popular with teens and students, these products provide a buzz that supposedly improve alertness and help students cram for tests.

However, there is a risk in over consumption of caffeine. Caffeine intoxication can cause nervousness, anxiety, restlessness, insomnia, nausea, vomiting, tremors and rapid heart rate.

An 8 oz. can of Red Bull contains 27 grams of sugar, which is almost 6 teaspoons. Do you really need that much?

What to do at the supermarket:

Water is always a better choice for hydration, and a cup of espresso certainly has ample caffeine.

But if you really must drink some energy juice, choose something low in sugar and with a rational caffeine count. Since caffeine amounts do not appear on most product labels, check in advance if there is a particular brand you or your teen is interested in. Here is a helpful list from energyfiend.

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The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) has recently published their 2009 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends report. Here are some interesting tidbits:

1. A three stage behavior in cutting back on food spending:

stage 1 – switching from sit down fare to fast food restaurants.
stage 2 – supermarket strategies – coupons, private brands, basic ingredients, shopping lists.
stage 3 – switching store formats to super centers and warehouse clubs.

2. There are less impulse buys. People preparing shopping lists in advance. (Reminder: previous research has shown that 60-75% of the products purchased in a supermarket are unplanned.)

3. Over half the people surveyed cook more meals at home this year compared to last. 92% claim they eat healthier at home than they would outside. Still,   over half believe they could eat even healthier.

4. Consumers are still seeking time saving and affordable solutions for home: half are interested in easy to make recipes.

5. Retailers are providing tools and information online and in stores to help customers make healthy choices at the supermarket, including nutrition and health information (71%) and even in-store nutritionists (6%).

6. Despite the recent food safety crises (salmonella, swine flue, and the likes) over 80% of shoppers are confident of the safety of food in the supermarket. Most would like to see safety improve, though. Consumers are twice as  comfortable with food from the United States compared to imports.

7. Local and sustainable are still strong trends, despite the recession.

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Add this to the list of modern food annoyances. It’s bad enough we’ve become a society of frozen TV Dinners munchers; now even the pleasure of a 2 minute microwave meal has been taken away from us thanks to food borne pathogens that can kill us.

From the New York Times:

The frozen pot pies that sickened an estimated 15,000 people with salmonella in 2007 left federal inspectors mystified. At first they suspected the turkey. Then they considered the peas, carrots and potatoes.

The pie maker, ConAgra Foods, began spot-checking the vegetables for pathogens, but could not find the culprit. It also tried cooking the vegetables at high temperatures, a strategy the industry calls a “kill step,” to wipe out any lingering microbes. But the vegetables turned to mush in the process.

So ConAgra — which sold more than 100 million pot pies last year under its popular Banquet label — decided to make the consumer responsible for the kill step. The “food safety” instructions and four-step diagram on the 69-cent pies offer this guidance: “Internal temperature needs to reach 165° F as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.”

Read the entire article…

What to do at the supermarket:

Buying and preparing your own meals, on a range or in the oven, will help you stay healthy and is much more nutritious than frozen.

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What’s in the future of food product labels? Plenty of innovation, according to a recent article in Food Quality News:

Expiry Warning Labels:

Smart packaging including freshness and time-temperature indicators (TTIs) … for foods that are highly temperature sensitive is a growing trend.
the barcode label is based on the employment of an ink that is nearly invisible, but which turns red when the food is contaminated, with the change in coloor on the barcode preventing the product from being scanned at the checkout counter.

This invention was developed by scientists at The University of Rhode Island in partnership with a food safety company, SIRA Technologies.

The projected cost per unit – about 4 cents a label. That’s about 4 cents more than what a label costs today, so it’ll be interesting to see which high-end products will employ this measure once it is commercialized.

Olifactory Sensation:

If the smell from the supermarket bakery or deli department is not enough to crank up your hunger hormones and open up your wallet, here’s what the future has in store for you:

Peter Harrop, IDTechex chairman, said that printed electronics are also emerging that will engage more of the human senses: “Future labels will be able to sense when a consumer is near and emit an aroma such as coffee to encourage them to purchase the product.”

He added that the next generation printed electronics will also include reusable, reconfigurable and programmable labels, some of which are responsive and interactive such as moving color pictures.

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For almost a month, the major food headline is the peanut butter salmonella outbreak plaguing our country. Eight deaths, thousands of hospitalizations, over 1600 products recalles, and just one single company responsible for it all.

Peanut butter sales are down 25%. Big brands Jif and Peter Pan have taken out newspaper ads with coupons to assure the public their products are safe. From a PR perspective, having to boast that your product is not poisoned goes to show how distressed the entire peanut marketing industry is these days.

Calls for a unified Food Safety system are increasing. New head of USDA Tom Vilsack said on Friday that a single agency would be better equipped to prevent and manage outbreaks such as this. With respect to the USDA and FDA he said “No matter how you slice it, the systems are different. The coordination is not what it needs to be. Neither one of them is as modern as they need to be.” [NY Times]

Peanut Corporation of America, the family owned peanut processor responsible for the tainted products, is now being scrutinized for poor sanitation and hygiene at the plant, knowingly shipping products after discovering contamination, and perhaps a few other corners cut. The plant has been shut down.

When it was operational, PCA employees earned minimum wage and received almost no benefits. Many were temps with zero job security.

How does this affect food safety?

Why would any temp earning a few dollars an hour, without any prospects for advancement,  be interested in anything going on at the plant? Whether improving a process, reporting a sanitary problem, or any other issue that may cause friction with management, manual laborers know to keep their eyes, ears and mouths shut.

So why not pay better and get more from employees, including safety improvements?

To understand this, we need to take a look at the food industry value chain, and try to learn why manufacturing plants would be so cheap.

Supermarkets lure consumers with the promise of cheap food. The competition is cutthroat,  with average margins around 1%.  Big brands and manufacturers are asked by grocers to lower prices they pay for goods. These vendors then do the same to their suppliers. Note that there are many suppliers for each ingredient type. These suppliers, such as PCA, need to compete primarily on price, as there is no importance to brand in a commodity such as peanuts. In fact, most suppliers have to compete in tenders at least once a year in order to win major accounts, each time squeezed a bit more to provide better pricing.

And that’s where trouble starts to brew. Because on Monday, a manufacturer needs to choose between fixing a broken machine or a fixing a leaky roof. A broken machine means no sales, no revenue. A leaky roof means a tiny chance for a salmonella outbreak. Most, we’d like to believe, make the morally correct decision.

If you were the owner of a plant barely breaking even, what would you do?

Would higher prices for food necessarily improve food safety? Probably not. A lot of the extra money would evaporate before it ever reached the employees of a manufacturing plant. But maybe one day, a brave brand may decide to distinguish itself on the safety record of its products, charge a premium and make sure the extra cash is divided among the entire value chain in order to ensure strict safety measures.

On average, our food is the cheapest it has ever been in the history of mankind. But not for everyone. In the case of this salmonella outbreak, there’s a small number of consumers that ended up paying a very dear price, their life.

As with organic foods, there should be many consumers willing to pay a premium to know they are getting safer food. Perhaps this is an opportunity …

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Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave since New Year’s, you’ve surely heard of the recent salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter. In this post:

1. A quick recap of the facts.
2. Seven healthy alternatives, including tahini, almond butter and more. Read more…