How funny is this? (Not)
By Gina Spadafori
July 1, 2008
I think I have food poisoning. In LolCats language, srsly. Here I’ve been eating mostly at home for months, sourcing all my food from local, known producers and suppliers.
Yesterday I eat out at a greasy spoon for breakfast with my parents for my mom’s 75th birthday (restaurant of their choice, ugh), followed by dinner out with my brother (to complain about the breakfast). Not sure of the culprit, but oh, am I sick.
This, too, shall pass (if it hasn’t already). The details I will spare you. Christie will come in with something good to post. I’m going back to bed to contemplate the impending collapse of our public food safety system.
I think Ive lost my ability to digest garbage with all the healthy eating I’ve been doing.
Update from Christie, at 11 AM: Unknown to Gina when she wrote this, I spent the weekend eating at restaurants and vendors at San Francisco’s Pride celebration and I, too, have the squirty horrors… I was up all freaking night.
I’m actually feeling semi-human right now so as soon as I get the dogs walked and fed and take a shower, I’ll try to come back and be informative and amusing and all the other reasons you read this blog.
Unless you’re all here to learn more about Gina’s and my intestinal health. In which case, carry on.
I’ve been reading that with over 800 people sickened by this latest Salmonella outbreak, the FDA now says tomatoes may not be to blame. But they don’t know what is to blame. And they may never know. So just don’t eat anything I guess. Except tomatoes - none of them have come up positive for Salmonella so it’s prolly one of those OTHER foods.
Comment by slt — July 1, 2008 @ 7:40 am
I hope you start feeling better soon.
Comment by Jason — July 1, 2008 @ 7:47 am
well. “this too shall pass” IS pretty funny in context.
Though probably not to you.
I hope you feel better
Comment by EmilyS — July 1, 2008 @ 9:56 am
We carry a bottle of Green Tea Extract from Whole Foods just to prevent such things. We put three drops in our coffee or water. That represents something like 15 cups of Green Tea.
Comment by Dennis — July 1, 2008 @ 10:49 am
Ha… I just updated this post with my own sad tale of woe.
Comment by Christie Keith — July 1, 2008 @ 11:01 am
Oh oh - looks like SOMEONE’S just a wee bit unhappy with the FDA (poor babies!):
http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne.....9072.story
“If contaminated tomatoes are not the source, health officials worry about the possible recriminations for officials of the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state health departments. Consumers avoided tomatoes, restaurants emptied shelves and suppliers destroyed their stocks after the FDA issued a nationwide warning in early June.
“‘The tomato industry probably will demand government reforms’, said Jim Prevor, editor of Produce Business, a trade magazine that estimates that tomato farmers and distributors could lose $250 million in lost sales and destroyed supplies.
“‘The produce industry will insist on congressional hearings - that there will be a real investigation into how this was conducted,’ Prevor said. ‘This is a real disaster.’”
Oh - and several thousand cats and dogs dead and dying wasn’t?
Will tainted tomatoes accomplish what tainted pet food could not? Only time will tell . . . . . . . .
Comment by The OTHER Pat — July 1, 2008 @ 11:56 am
TOPat, at USA today ( http://tinyurl.com/5o8wrs ), they had this gem:
“If another food is found to be the culprit after tomatoes were recalled nationwide and the produce industry sustained losses of hundreds of millions of dollars, food safety experts say the public’s trust in the government’s ability to track foodborne illnesses will be shattered.”
I wasn’t aware we still had trust in their abilities.
Comment by straybaby — July 1, 2008 @ 12:05 pm
Not to let the FDA off the the hook, but do consider that most restaurant food poisoning is home grown. I have three kids under ten and this has been a bumper crop year for intestinal bugs. All it takes is one person failing to wash up properly and bingo.
This happened at a National specialty show I was at 5 years ago. 800 people were in at the hotel and about half went to a big buffet one night. About half of those became ill with a Norwalk type illness. It was isolated to one serving table at the dinner. As the same ingredients were present at most tables, the likely culprit was human fecal contamination from some one who did not wash up properly.
It’s the sort of thing that will put you off eating out for quite sometime and I already had a pretty low opinion of hotel food anyway!
Comment by JenniferJ — July 1, 2008 @ 12:24 pm
Here in Wisconsin many local organic farms are in danger of loosing their certification because of all the flooding. The flood waters have carried any number of bugs, manure, pesticides and such far from their original fields. Scout and our new pal Trigger came in from the fields at the farm the last two days with the unmistakable odor of cow manure. Since I have no cows on the farm and they were not off my property and the nearest field that received manure as at least a half mile away its obvious that the creek is carrying a huge load of it down to the Manitowoc River and on to Lake Mi.
Now South Mud Creek is not very long, maybe 5 miles or so for the originating springs. But if that much concentrated goo got into the amount of water we had then you know its really quite a bit. Since I watch these things I know the contractor that spread that manure actually did it the right way… They injected it into the ground (not just spread on the surface) and the farmer immediately worked up the soil and planted it.
So, if I had organic veggies planted in my fields what do you think they would smell like now? What would be on them? What do you think would happen if they were harvested and then mixed in with tons of other similar veggies that may not have had the same problem and distributed back out to stores and eateries?
Here’s an additional clue. Within the last 10 years in Wisconsin we have had no fewer than 3 “100 year” floods with this last one some calling a 500 year variety. No doubt you have seen the footage of Lake Delton emptying into the Wisconsin River taking a few large homes with it?
As the weather changes, so do the fields. When the fields change so do the plants. As the plants change, so you. Maybe we need to hear less about dog cars than dog carts?
Comment by Bernard J. (Bernie) Starzewski — July 1, 2008 @ 12:49 pm
Anytime you’re eating somewhere you’re not sure about, eat 1 to 2 raw cloves (each clove should be about the size of your thumb — if not, eat more) of garlic afterwards.
Unfortunately, it has to be raw, but the garlic will zapp the nasty bacteria in your stomach before it has a chance to make you sick.
After getting sick, raw garlic will still help with the bugs, but you’ll still need supportive care from green tea (adds needed fluid and is astringent, so tightens up that gut, which probably really needs that help right now! ;-)) and whatever else you like to help get yourself through the misery.
Full Disclosure: I am a member of the Garlic Seed Foundation, have been a speaker at its Garlic Roundtables both times they came to PA, have evaluated varieties for the USDA and yes, grow a lot of garlic. But, if you know anything about the Garlic Seed Foundation (pretty much the premier garlic organization in the US), we’re almost all in sustainable ag (so make almost no money) and are very honest — especially when it comes to garlic, which is the premier crop for anyone, anywhere! :-D (Yes, I’m harvesting right now and a bit punch-drunk on sulfur! ;-))
Comment by Dorene — July 1, 2008 @ 1:28 pm
I’m a chef and let’s just say I’m VERY picky as to where I will eat. What I’ve seen in various establishments would put you off eating out permanently. But those family gigs are hard to avoid, so sorry! Hope you feel better soon.
Comment by Dutch — July 1, 2008 @ 1:31 pm
Hey,
didn’t we warn them last year, when the pet food recalls happened?
And did they not ignore us, and/or laugh at us…saying that we were “overeacting?”
Boy, how time changes things.
Comment by Marcy — July 1, 2008 @ 5:39 pm
No - I think it’s the TOMATOES that are changing things here. After all, NOW we’re talking “people food”!
Comment by The OTHER Pat — July 1, 2008 @ 5:45 pm
Wow. I had food poisoning last week too. In Indiana. No idea what caused it. I had a fever as well as intestinal symptoms. I’m still not quite back to normal, but getting there.
Comment by K. A. S. — July 1, 2008 @ 6:22 pm
Comment by The OTHER Pat — July 1, 2008 @ 5:45 pm
Well, now they’re saying that it might not just be the tomatoes, that there could be cross contamination with other veggies.
Here we are a year later, and now WE are the canaries in the coal mine!
Funny, I don’t hear anyone laughing now.
Comment by Marcy — July 1, 2008 @ 10:18 pm
Snipped from http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidr.....salmo.html
“Acheson acknowledged the difficulties in investigating the outbreak and said federal officials are already pondering ways to avoid similar problems the next time the nation faces a large outbreak linked to fresh produce.
He said the FDA is exploring the idea of forming an interagency task force to help coordinate the work of federal agencies and state health departments.
The produce industry has a role to play in avoiding a repeat of this difficult outbreak investigation by ensuring that its products are safe, Acheson said. One reason for the frustrating slowness of the trace-back studies is that most growers, packers, and distributors still maintain paper records. “Electronic record-keeping would enhance traceability,” he said.
Also, he said Congress still has not required food companies to build in food safety controls that the FDA requested last November when it released its food safety plan.”
Comment by slt — July 2, 2008 @ 5:37 am
The general assumption is that this has a single source.
What if it doen’t? What if the weather and rains have caused any number of fields to essentially have the same problem?
If the contaminated water affects tomatoes can it not also affect the spinach growing in the next field or miles down stream?
Agricultural practices are now so uniform that I think we should no longer be surprised if the mon-culture practice deliver uniform results with large scale events.
Comment by Bernard J. (Bernie) Starzewski — July 2, 2008 @ 7:27 am
Nichols Fox wrote two books on this subject - almost 10 yrs ago. Still well worth a read, as things have got worse, not better.
It was probably something you ate: A practical guide to avoiding and surviving foodborne illness; and Spoiled: Why Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It.
Comment by hornblower — July 2, 2008 @ 9:47 am