E. Coli - a stupid question

[auntieannie]

You might have heard that continental Europe and particularly Germany is shaken by a bout of E Coli infection.

Hum... the talk is all about it being a new strain ... but surely the E Coli can be WASHED off the vegetables it lives on before it gets to one's guts, no?

What about thoroughly washing vegetables?
What about if you are not sure... cooking them? obviously, I wouldn't cook cucumber, but other vegetables affected such as tomatoes are cookable?

Is it me looking from afar not understanding the panic? Can someone explain?

[Deleted]

I think I read that the incubation period is something like 10 days, which is one point that is bothering a lot of people. At lot of us can't remember what we ate yesterday, much less ten days ago. And now that they have pretty much acquitted Spanish produce (although the damage is done), since only Germans and people who have been to Germany seem to be contaminated, it's quite probably going to turn out to be a local product. Since Germans pride themselves on being so clean, they are probably looking right past the real cause "because it couldn't possibly be that." Except that it is.

Slowly but surely, they're closing in, though -- region of Hamburg, 2000 cases, of which 500 are serious.... 18 dead (17 in Germany, 1 in Sweden...).

[cheerypeabrain]

It is quite scary.....

Mind you...my son and I were wandering about the garden this afternoon...picking and eating sugar snap peas, strawberries, nasturtium leaves and flowers, herbs and baby lettuce leaves as well as a couple of small courgettes...nothing was washed we just wiped any dust or soil off and ate them...oops.

Latest from the BBC

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13639617

[rikita]

i had stomach aches today and my colleagues started getting all panicky that i might have gotten that - especially since i was in hamburg recently. but really, i would say the odds are very low.

btw, why wouldn't you cook cucumber? cooked (steamed) cucumber can be quite tasty...

[Deleted]

I have never heard of cooked cucumber either, except that I seem to have a fragile thread of memory of something called 'cucumber soup.'

I will be eating a cucumber tonight, guaranteed grown in France (but I don't care since cucumbers are not the culprit).

[cheerypeabrain]

I did notice that the British grown produce was flying off the shelves at Sainsbury's Supermarket.

[mich64]

Last summer, I believe in was in the USA, they had an outbreak tracked back to spinach. We had our own outbreak here in our little city about 4 years ago, my sister-in-law was the lab tech who identified it. Fortuntely no one perished from it but quite a few people were quite ill. The source was tracked back to a popular hamburger restaurant and was quickly resolved.

Hopefully the source can be found quickly. Homegrown vegetables should be safe, when found in vegetables, it often tracks back to infected water sources that mass vegetable growers use.

Mich

[auntieannie]

reading more about it now, I understand that they really still have no clue what the source of the infection might be. And that must be really frightening.

[rikita]

according to wikipedia, steamed cucumbers are particularly typical in berlin.

my stomach is better though, so i suppose my journey to hamburg didn't put me in danger.

[bixaorellana]

www.myhealthytown.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=96

[Deleted]

So, in the end, it's all a question of German bean sprouts. I think that Spain deserves a great deal of compensation in this matter.

[auntieannie]

Fancy representing them, K?

[fumobici]

So often it's the bean sprouts that poison everybody.

[zona]

I notice that some of the most recent outbreaks have been caused by vegetables that take more effort to wash thoroughly (bean sprouts, spinach leaves, green onions). It seems easier to really scrub the relatively smooth surface of a cucumber or tomato than to get in all the nooks of a spinach leaf or clean every individual bean sprout.

I have seen a few "vegetable wash" products on the market and my aunt (who was hospitalized with a very serious case of E. coli a few years ago) now religiously washes all raw veggies in a mild bleach solution. To me that seems a bit extreme, I wonder if just a mild vinegar rinse would be effective?

[auntieannie]

it would, zona. it would. I would think she's poisoning herself in the long term with bleach.

[tod2]

Mmmmm.....I don't blame her after having survived e-coli - If by rinsing her veg in a MILD solution of household bleach is going to poison her then we must be walking corpses! All our drinking water is treated and I have tested it for chlorine with my swimming pool kit - and yes, the reading was higher than the pool! (Must be that the pool needed more bleach or could it have possibly been the water was over treated)??

The government has asked people who draw their drinking water from rivers to please add one teaspoon of bleach to every 20litres. We used to just boil it when I was a kid.

[rikita]

not sure what is in the tap water here, but supposedly the berlin tap water is as good or better than most of the water sold in shops. at least that's what some research found out a few years ago.

[Deleted]

Looks like it might not be the bean sprouts after all -- the samples they've been checking are all fine. More detective work to do!

[Deleted]

And so they all had eaten bean sprouts..... case closed?

[Kimby]

There was an outbreak of E. Coli in Missoula a few years back. The CDC (Center for Disease Control in Atlanta) sent in a team to interview people and track down the source. It appears that leaf lettuce was the culprit, but not by itself. Apparently it was cross-contaminated from being hauled in a truck that had hauled something filthy before it.

We periodically have oubreaks of Hepatitis A that are tracked to fast food restaurants whose employees are a bit lax about hand-washing after visiting the toilet. Ewww.

[Deleted]

Am I the only person evil enough to find a certain satisfaction in the fact that the culprit was found in "health food" from an organic farm?

But 35 deaths is a huge price to pay....

[Kimby]

Evil or dumb, K2? If this causes even less of our food supply to be organic and good for us, instead of loaded with chemicals, we all lose.

[auntieannie]

It only proves that it's a question of washing and washing well. I remember my mom's washing veggies. it was thorough. You can wash a veg with all the "germ killing rubbish" you want, if you don't wash it thoroughly, it's not worth a thing as the baddies will still be there, waiting to make you sick. Water washes vegetables very well, if YOU do it thoroughly.
*jumps off soap box*

[Deleted]

Jun 12, 2011 21:22:06 GMT Kimby said:

Evil or dumb, K2? If this causes even less of our food supply to be organic and good for us, instead of loaded with chemicals, we all lose.

Aha, you have just proved that you are one of the many people who have misunderstood the point of organic products. They are not good for you and are not meant to be. In fact, organic foods are often less good for you and less nutritious than the GM foods. The whole point of organic foods is that they are good for the environment. They are not necessarily good for people. They have bacteria, they have worms, they have cooties.

When you eat such products, it is your responsibility to handle and prepare them in a way that they will not make you sick (or kill you). Many people thought just the opposite -- that they were exempted from being careful because they were eating 'clean & pure' organic food. At last we have a wake up call to make people be careful again.

[Kimby]

I thought the point was to ingest fewer toxins.
AND to go easier on the environment.
And besides, all those vegans need to eat a few worms and cooties for protein!

[Deleted]

I used to think that as well, until I read up on the subject. Obviously none of us want to eat pesticides, but that is not an issue for a lot of those GM foods, since they were created not to need pesticides.

Of course in Europe where GM foods are forbidden, we have to put up with the pesticides, and France is the European champion for that. Of course, France is also the EU champion for agriculture, so that might have something to do with it.

[Kimby]

You callin me ig'nant, Kerouac?? ;D

[Deleted]

Missoula, Montana? Do you people even wear shoes?

[Kimby]

Boots, K2.
Or Mukluks.

[fumobici]

Jun 12, 2011 21:51:22 GMT kerouac2 said:

They are not good for you and are not meant to be. In fact, organic foods are often less good for you and less nutritious than the GM foods. The whole point of organic foods is that they are good for the environment. They are not necessarily good for people. They have bacteria, they have worms, they have cooties.
.

Quite. If you are buying/eating organic food primarily because you think they are healthier for you, you've missed most of the point. Supporting organic agriculture is supporting more responsible and sustainable farming practices.

Of course proponents of organic foods are loathe to discourage the narrative based on selfish interests because that motivates people to buy the stuff.