Living dangerously with salsa and guacamole
Remember how much fun it was to taste a bit of the raw batter during the making of cakes or cookies when you were a child? Well, that simple joy ended years ago, when raw eggs were nixed because they carried salmonella. Off limits, too, became the many wonderful recipes featuring raw egg whites, such as this favorite, unless one wanted to live especially dangerously.
And have you tried ordering a medium rare hamburger lately in a restaurant? Faggetaboutit. Oh, they’ll ask you how you’d like your burger cooked, all right. But if you answer with a request for anything less well-done than “medium,” they’ll sigh and say they just can’t do it. E.coli, you know.
And now we have warnings about two foods that heretofore seemed especially innocuous, salsa and guacamole:
The dishes were blamed for one in 25 identified outbreaks of food poisoning at restaurants between 1998 and 2008””more than twice the rate of the previous decade, the CDC said. Often, the outbreaks were traced to raw hot peppers, tomatoes and cilantro””common ingredients in salsa and guacamole.
The worst thing I’d ever previously thought salsa and guacomole could do to me was to taste so yummy with taco chips that I’d eat too much of them and gain weight. So could the food police please just stay away for a change and leave us to enjoy our simple pleasures, unmolested? Thank you; much obliged.
In my native Ohio, the Mexican restaurant boom began about 25-30 years ago. The first time I had guacamole was the first time I had ever had avocados or cilantro. It was transformational. I felt that I had tasted ambrosia, albeit savory rather than sweet. I was intrigued by the unique taste of the tiny green leaves in the guacamole. I had no idea what it was and was relieved to learn it’s name.
If I can find a good avocado or two, guacamole and salsa with chips will be my entire meal.
They can say what they want, I still make–and eat–a mean carbonara. My family really likes it, too.
Did you ever eat poi, the Hawaiian delicacy. I went to an authentic luau 25 years ago and had my first (and only) taste. I’m still sick. I’m afraid that when the food police (or food nazis) are done, we will no longer be allowed to eat bread products, or meat, or fish, or salt, or pepper, or milk products, or spices, or fruits, or vegetables, or anything else that might have a decent flavor. Instead the government will require us to eat some sort of manufactured paste (soylent green, anyone) that will look like and probably taste as foul as poi.
I can wait.
But Neo, they’re not knocking salsa or guacamole due to inherently bad characteristics. Rather, they’re warning about food poisoning, which is a preparation issue.
I’m annoyed at the food police too; they can have my well marbled beef when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers! And I will eat chocolate chip cookie dough when I want to, dammit! But this specific issue is more of a warning about how things are prepared. And I don’t see the harm or foul in this case. The consumption nannys can quit twitting me about bacon (it’s not like I’ll eat a whole damn pound in one setting), but when I’m eating out, I don’t mind repeated reminders to restaurants to stay clean and sanitary. Having seen as a student both food prep where nobody gave a damn about sanitation (I once saw chicken being defrosted out on the sidewalk. True story.) and alternately where it was given real priority, I can attest that replaying the message helps, due to staff turnover in that industry.
This one doesn’t bother me. Not like the nanny-ism that pervades the art of repast elsewhere, from the overlauding of “organic” (as if molds and other infections aren’t worth fighting against) to the effete concerns like a lobster’s suffering. Those I can do without!
E.coli and salmonella traces have also been found in that great treasure of the eco-nuts: the reusable grocery bag. It was recommended to wash them often. Seems like that might wipe out a lot of the environmental savings.
There is food poisoning and there is real food poisoning. Mild food poisoning often relates to staph toxins, not actual viable bacteria. Pathogenic E. coli and Salmonella are usually of intermediate severity. And then there is viral: it may have been in 2008 that ~100 folks, all patrons of one midwest Mexican restaurant, came down with Hepatitis B, with several deaths due to liver wipeout. The epidemiologic investigation showed all ate salsa, and the only raw ingredient therein was green onions….which were traced to a farm in Mexico, where a worker was found to have the identical viral strain. Probably peed and crapped in the fields.
Bottom line for me is to be extremely skeptical when buying produce for raw consumption, especially foreign products.
Prudence, not xenophobia!
Reminds me of the heparin problem. This critical anticoagulant is derived from pig gut, all of its precursor form now from China, where it is produced in usually grubby small shops, and then bundled (much like mortgages were securitized), and passed down the processing chain. Bad heparin caused major, major problems for American patients. The official Chinese response? We don’t inspect or enforce, but it is OK for you to send FDA inspectors to China to check our pig gut places out.
I am not that concerned about food poisoning. When I have stayed with friends in a mountainous section of Central America- altitude around 5,000 feet, I have eaten and drunk what they did. They had no refrigeration, and kept their pot of beans in a screened-out apparatus similar to a pie safe. I have eaten their day old beans time and again without any negative consequences. Perhaps the hot peppers killed any bacteria. Disclosure: on days that the local water supply did not chlorinate, I drank water purified with iodide. Not tasty, but safe.
I have had only two negative experiences with hot peppers. Once in Peru, I ate a raw rocoto pepper which previously I had eaten cooked and stuffed. This time the heat of the rocoto pepper and the altitude gave me heart palpitations and caused me to sweat. Once on the rig in Latin America I ate some hot peppers which came out the other end painfully hot- they only time that has ever happened, and I eat a LOT of hot peppers. I suspect that hot peppers kill some bacteria.
One way to cut down on the possibility of food poisoning is to minimize purchasing processed food from stores, and minimize eating out. Which I do. I am not concerned with food staying out on the counter a bit at my place.
I returned to the Southwest after an absence of around 7 years for a honeymoon trip to Mexico. On the way back we stopped at a roadside taco shack where I got some chicken tacos.
Major Touristas! It was like a 3 day case of a bad flu.
Touristas had never bothered me before so I figured it was my extended absence from Mexico and went on a campaign of exposure to gut flora and fauna, once even snatching a few pizza slices from a friend’s trash where she had thrown them after they had sat on a coffee table over night.
That was 30 years ago. After some initial digestive fanfares I haven’t suffered a digestive complaint since. Not one.
I like to do a “Rocky” with the raw eggs and frequently grab a handful of hamburger from the fridge and slap it raw on a bun with some onion without the slightest ill effect.
We wouldn’t send a kid into combat without some basic training. Shouldn’t do it to our guts, either. And with some AIT (Advanced Immuno-Training) the more common kinds of ickies which surround us shouldn’t often be a problem unless there’s some kind of organic distress.
Besides… can an avocado be cooked? Not likely.
Well, OK. You can put avocado in ceviche and that’s sort of cooking.
Its a part of what used to be life..
anyway.. when they get rid of air conditioning for the little people, they will be happy with a lot more food poisoning and medical bills.
I’ve never had food poisoning in 50 years. I chalk it up to parents raising me to eat every kind of food imaginable.
by the way…
this is what totalitarianism is… not the graphic jack boots, but the constant you cant have what you want because its: not fair, bad for you, bad for society, bad for animals, bad for the planet, wastes productivity, doesn’t increase the state, etc.
since people didn’t listen to us talking for 30 years, and didn’t believe that such tiny harmless things that seem so good are so bad. [heck, they still love feminism]
now we are stuck with it.
and by other means they are controlling other things. as taxes, we all know, are whips and carrots of socialism, not ways to pay bills.
and this is what happens when you FEMNIZE society and make womens ideals the only ideals allowed.
they baby proof the world and become over protective.
so, big momma PC, she is going to make you ok.
or haven’t you ever listened to Pink Floyd the wall?
[remember its a nazi-esque story]
MANY of their songs talk obtusely about things (just as rocky horror abstracted the history).
MOTHER is about the state as much as it is about women without men who smother their children.
the NANNY state… is women’s ideals dominating with no other foil to balance them.
in the flesh? and in the flesh, describes what its like to come to a political rally… and later, what expectations are fulfilled by doing so…
the first version basically says you have to try it to know it…
So you thought you might like to,
Go to the show.
To feel the warm thrill of confusion,
That space cadet glow.
Tell me is something eluding you, sunshine?
Is this not what you expected to see?
If you wanna find out what’s behind these cold eyes,
You’ll just have to blow your way through this disguise.
describes a rifensthal crowd… the heady confusion.. the non thinking exuberance..
everyone focused on one..
the person that they think they no..
after a long while, the song repeats, but no question mark… the people now know what is BEHIND the mask…
we are moving from the ? of the false person
to the ! of the reality underneath it
So you thought you might like to go to the show.
To feel the warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow.
I got me some bad news for you, sunshine.
Pink isn’t well, he stayed back at the hotel,
And he sent us along as a surrugate band.
We’re gonna find out where you fans really stand.
Are there any queers in the theatre tonight?
Get ’em up against the wall. — against the wall!
And that one in the spotlight, he don’t look right to me.
Get him up against the wall. — against the wall!
And that one looks Jewish, and that one’s a coon.
Who let all this riffraff into the room?
There’s one smoking a joint, and another with spots!
If I had my way I’d have all of ya shot.
what happens next? “RUN LIKE HELL”
it tells the script..
the idealists put some image up
a big ? in which they are forced to finish the storis so that he is what everyone thinks they want.
you go through the whole turmoil, and they come out in the real. he was never waht you thought he was, but now he is real. no more question mark.
and what can you do?
hide.. as the things you promoted and wanted AND HAD now are taken away and the people are removed.
the loose free stuff that allowed the old regime to be destroyed and usurped now has to be removed.
and so the jubilant becomes the hunted.
Actually, I’ve ordered my burgers medium rare in the last three restaurants I’ve ordered one in and gotten what I asked for each time. Maybe not quite meeting MY definition of “medium rare” each and every time- though high marks for the deli in Santa Fe that gave me a perfectly medium rare burger- but I was never told they couldn’t do it. Perhaps New Mexico just hasn’t gotten around to caring yet.
Produce is a common vector for food infection for all the reasons Tom outlines above- foreign sources and because people are not as careful as they are with meat and eggs. Speaking of eggs, get the pasteurized kind (the effects are fairly minimal) and go ahead and live large.
I love how beliefs triumph over factual science, even here.
Geez Edith, here come the food police!
I make mayonnaise. You use raw eggs. No problems.
I would trust eggs before I’d trust the libs at the FDA.
Listened to a story about this on NPR, years ago when I still listened to NPR. Their line was basically, that you (and your digestive system) became accustomed to a certain level of bacteria/contamination/microscopic flora’n’fauna on an every-day basis, and you could tolerate pretty much everything within this range. I have only been sick with food poisoning twice in my life as an adult – once from a piece of cream pastry from a patisserie in Athens (it was from an unrefrigerated case – my bad and I knew at once that it was bad!), and once from leftover tomato/sausage/macaroni casserole of my own (Never figured out what went wrong with that). And I cheerfully ate street food and fresh fruit wherever I was stationed overseas, and drank water from the tap, too – with no ill effects, so there probably is something to Nolanimrod’s programme.
Oh, BTW – my British grandmother was teased for years about what she did, the first time she encountered an avocado … she did the traditional thing that British cooks used to do with vegetables; she boiled that sucker for 40 minutes!
It is entirely possible to get food poisoning no matter WHAT you’ve done to your system before. Three sailors who are none too picky on such things, two smoke-jumpers and a guy who does the Alaska fishing thing all got 24 hour flu level food poisoning from a Mexican joint.
(family members, all– worst family reunion day ever)
For that matter, when she was still alive, my grandmother got food poisoning a few times– this is a woman that would scrape the blue-gray fuzz off of her cottage cheese before snacking.
This is important information if you are someone with a compromised immune system.
I have it, on relatively decent authority, that eggs have about a 1 in 30,000 to 40,000 chance of containing contaminants. But beyond, unless you are really young, really old, ill already, or pregnant, worrying about this is more harmful than the facts. Or, to put it in terms more closely resembling something else you might do, you have the same risk of egg born illness as you have with consuming spinach or other green leafy plants.
However, un/under cooked wheat? I know it can carry the same bad stuff. I do not know how prevalent it is, though I know a lot of what is accused of causing illness is often wrong. Perhaps it was the wheat/flour, not so much the eggs, with doughs and batters? (if true at all, that is, like the rest)
Whatever, when out, I will eat what I choose. The headline-grabbers and foodborne illnesses be damned… full chips ahead. Though, more if I trust the facility.
Eggs get salmonella in utero, as it were, from the hens.The majority of commercial chickens have salmonella. Chicken processing spreads the bugs- there are more chickens positive at the end of the disassembly line than at the beginning. Your system can, and does, knock off small doses of bad bugs and you never know you had a dose. So there is always a risk with all undercooked chicken and undercooked eggs, no matter what kind of slop you were exposed to when young.
And guess what, there are bugs (bacteria, their spores; yeasts, their spores) in the air. That’s the basis for sourdough starter- let flour/water sit out overnight.
Our friends on the left and the Urge to Control
http://commonsensepoliticalthought.com/?p=10167
Junk food and obesity: Taking a cue from tobacco control
What to do about the obesity epidemic? Here’s a thought: Substitute “tobacco” for “junk food.” That provides a pretty clear road map about what government authorities should be doing to safeguard public health.
Unfortunately, officials are instead just reheating the same old leftovers.
So, I’ll give my experiences as an amateur volunteer caterer. In my state (Tennessee) I have a great deal of protections – eat my food at your own risk 🙂
A large number of these things will never affect people at home – I eat raw egg products all the time but I have learned (often the hard way) to not do it when cooking in bulk.
In home cooking there just isn’t that much potential for contamination. You make a Caesar salad and use raw eggs – you have a VERY low chance of getting something you may feel funny over before you go to bed. Now I make that in bulk and let it sit for the amount of time needed to serve. I take an egg that even the most weak system that wasn’t confined to a sanitary bubble would not miss a beat, add it with a few hundred more breeding grounds, and give it 30 minutes and you have *all* of them making people sick.
I’ve have – literally – run into bulk chili I made that not only bred in a 20F environment but just the plastic bags that *touched* the chili (which is an inherently septic environment) gagged us the next day. Indeed I have for years said anything that survives certain environments ought to eat a little human – having now had *two* incidents I no longer believe that idea (both dealt with bulk for 50+ people).
I’ve really changed my mind about a certain amount of thing. I’m probably more nonchalant over a great deal of home cooking things for one night but am a real stickler for bulk cooking. I’ve seen WAY too many things I will call a “learning experience” as I started cooking for a large number of people a couple of times a month (especially given how hard it was to convince my help to *not* do certain things – it took them having a night on the toilet to decide to listen).
No, I’m not commercial – I cook for a local gun club events that can range from 10 to several hundred people. I’m a software engineer, not a professional chef. We have had to purchase a number of real catering equipment, I have had to learn to use it, and the people helping me have had to learn to ask me before they decide to do anything out of the ordinary. I have had to learn to the differences from home cooking, both in preparation *and* safety (plus what I do is semi-primitive so that has a great deal of specialized issues too – I’ve cooked for between 250-300 in the heat of a dove field and a grill with some coolers).
That would explain the number of food poisonings on the ship, even though they don’t use obviously horrible sanitary practices.
The only way raw foods can be made safe from bacterial contamination is to irradiate them by gamma-rays. Technically, this is the best solution; but public prejustice against everything “radioactive”, however irrational, precludes this.