6 Foods a Poisoning Expert Wouldn’t Touch

If you want to be safe when going out to eat with your family and friends, or when buying the ingredients you need for a healthy, tasty dinner you should stir away from these 6 foods a poisoning expert wouldn’t touch. A lawyer specialized in the food poisoning cases has revealed in the Journal of Food Poisoning what are the top 6 foods he encountered so often in his cases that he just doesn’t want to get near ever again.

The lawyer in question is part of the team that pleads against the Mexican bar and grill chain, Chipotle, on the accusations of serving people food contaminated with the E-coli bacteria and norovirus. He has been working with food poisoning cases since 1993 and has won, so far, $600 million damage for his clients.

Here are the 6 foods a poisoning expert wouldn’t touch.

Rare Meat

The E-coli bacteria that is responsible for the Chipotle scandal can be found in raw meat. The best way to make sure that your steak is not going to land you in the hospital is to eat it done, or well done since the E-coli bacteria can be eradicated when the meat is cooked at a temperature of 160 degrees or higher.

But E-coli is not the only threat in your juicy medium rare delicacy. Undercooked meat can also be a source of infection with salmonella or other dangerous bacteria. Marler, the expert on food poisoning says that undercooked meat is a danger because any bacteria that may be found on the meat’s surface can find its way to that pink, delicious middle of the steak, thus surviving the cooking process.

Raw Eggs

While people that actually eat raw eggs are rare, people shouldn’t forget to ask if any sauce or dressing is made out of raw or cooked eggs. Fresh mayonnaise from top restaurants is usually made with a raw egg yolk and some vegetable oil.

Marler recommends that people eat their eggs scrambled or hard boiled to avoid any salmonella infestation. He says that in 2010 salmonella originating from raw eggs infected around 2000 people.

Raw Oysters

It is a common knowledge that raw oysters with a little bit of spring onions and a squirt of vinegar are a delicacy, and an aphrodisiac, but they may also be very dangerous. Oysters are nature’s tiny filters so their quality greatly depends on where they are gathered. If the water in which they grew was infected with bacteria, they will most certainly be, too.

The lawyer says that food poisoning cases that are due to raw oysters have grown exponentially, and it may be due to the fact that the temperature of the ocean is warming and bacteria can develop better.

Milk and Juices that are Unpasteurized

The lawyer had a case in 1996 when a couple of children developed severe kidney complications after being infected with E-coli from an unpasteurized apple juice.

The families of the children allegedly won over $12 million in damage, but that didn’t solve their children’s health problems.

Marler says he only drinks pasteurized products because the risk of E-coli infection is just not worth it.

Raw Sprouts

Eating healthy has become a thing of interest for many people and the recipes often require fresh, odd ingredients like bean or radish sprouts. But according to Marler, in 2014, alone, there were 19 people who ended up hospitalized with salmonella because of the raw sprouts.

If you don’t want to avoid the sprouts entirely, try buying the pre-cooked kind that has been steamed.

Vegetables and Fruits that are Precut or Prewashed

Marler compares these to the plague. He says that they are the biggest purchase mistake an individual can make. They are almost never properly washed and chances of a salmonella, listeria or E-coli infestation are high.

The lawyer prefers to buy unwashed, uncut vegetables and fruit that he knows he will use in 2 to 4 days.

The list of 6 foods a poisoning expert wouldn’t touch is rather logical and the ingredients are not in the spotlight for being health hazards for the first time.

Image source: www.wikimedia.org