Foods That May Kill You

Nothing the media and others like better than to find ways to scare us.  If one subject works, gets followers or assists in raising funds, we hear it over and over.  A reliable standby continues to be food safety.  Here are two examples: one with an erroneous, but widely believed, message; and one with possibly serious, but mostly ignored, consequences.

Everyone should know that when you pick fruits or vegetables from the garden or fresh at the grocery store, they must washed (sometimes soaked) before anyone eats them.  If this is not yet common knowledge, it would be quite reasonable to start a campaign to inform and remind the public.  Instead for the last 15 years we have gotten the "Dirty Dozen" list from the Environmental Working Group (EWG).  They use inspections of popular fruits and vegetables to rank them according to pesticide contamination.

“EWG emphasizes studies that show pesticides in high concentration can lead to health problems, especially in young children.” But they fail to point out that the resulting levels, based on USDA- and FDA-sponsored tests of almost 39,000 non-organic fruit and vegetable samples “found that overall pesticide chemical residues…are far below what has been scientifically deemed tolerable for human consumption…[and] do not pose a health risk.”  Nevertheless, the group, characterized by CBS in this report as an “activist group,” continues to peddle the fear.

Notice that the list is based only on non-organic fruits and vegetables, which allows the EWG to promote organic food.  But there’s a catch.  As another site correctly points out:  “Your Organic Food Is Treated With Pesticides, Too.” Not only that but the USDA organic program allows some pesticides not classified as synthetic, and tests for only those pesticides disallowed by the organic program.  “So the EWG is reporting the stuff on conventional crops without considering what’s present on organic crops.”  That makes a difference, because according to What Gardeners Should Know About Pesticides(Purdue Extension PPP109), organic pesticides “are not necessarily safer” and “all products – organic or synthetic – have the potential to be toxic.  In some cases, buying organic might expose you to more pesticide residues, just a different pesticide.

Forbes calls the list “an egregious, science-free misinterpretation," and adds "What that [USDA] data actually demonstrates is the outstanding safety profile of the U.S. food supply, but EWG twists it into an argument for consumers to pony up the extra dollars to buy organic.”

In contrast, there is a frequently disregarded real danger, not within the food supply itself but in the realm of food preparation.  The USDA stresses on their website the absolute necessity of following proper procedures in handling, cooking, and storage of food.  This includes washing of all fresh fruit and vegetables, but it goes beyond that.  The experts also stress the need to cook beef, pork, veal, lamb, steaks, chops, roasts to a minimum internal temperature of 145 °F and allow a rest time of at least 3 minutes. (It keeps cooking when it rests.)  The reason for these precautions is that it is impossible to “see, smell, or taste harmful bacteria that may cause illness.”

But it has been the trend for quite some time to order steaks medium-rare. Those of us who prefer our steaks cooked longer are considered gauche and uncivilized.  “At Porter House New York in Midtown, executive chef and co-owner Michael Lomonaco says more than 60 percent of his customers order medium-rare.”  How does this compare to the recommendations?  “Most chefs regard beef cooked to medium-rare – with an internal temperature of 130 degrees off the grill and 135 degrees after resting – as the best way to bring out flavor and retain moisture in tender cuts such as rib-eye and top loin.”  That’s about 15 degrees out of the safe zone.

But a second problem compounds the first.  If a steak is overcooked and sent back to the kitchen, the only recourse is to cook another one.  But if a steak is undercooked and sent back, it can be cooked a little more, avoiding waste and financial loss.  It makes better business sense to give a customer a slightly undercooked steak, pushing up the possibility of illness a bit more.

So once again we find an example of Americans getting upset, changing behavior and spending more money based on faulty information, while they ignore valid advice about a real potential problem.  All we need to do is wash our fresh produce and cook our meat a little more, and there is nothing to worry about.