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Since the e. coli scare began, our spinach and leafy green consumption has gone from zero servings a day to, well, zero servings a day. But our more herbivorous readers may be sad to see that officials still haven't found how a bacteria that normally romps around our bowels made its way to our favorite iron-filled flora. The Times reports that the outbreak of the past few weeks, which may have killed as many as three people and poisoned almost 200 others (including plenty of kids and 11 New Yorkers), is currently without a clear source and may always remain without one. This is in spite of the fact that officials have localized the center of the outbreak to the California counties of Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Clara.
While schoolchildren everywhere rejoice at the prospect of not having to eat something good for them and not made of chocolate, the economic effects of the infestation are rippling across the food chain, so to speak, hitting spinach pickers, farmers, and restaurants. Losses are estimated to hover in the $100 million a month range. Some colorful theories being bandied about as to how the contamination occurred include the dumping of portable toilets onto crops and rodents sullying farmland as only they can.
The good news is that our friends at the FDA say that spinach grown outside of those three Salinas Valley counties is safe to eat. So if you MUST get your Popeye on, check out the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets site and support a local farm which can hook you up with some serious green. The bad news is because the symptoms of the infection can take a few weeks to show up in some cases, new cases will continue to arise into mid-October and thus the taint of tainted spinach will be with us for a while.
Related: Treehugger.com takes a look at how spinach from way over in California finds its way to the dinner tables of homes across America.
In the meanwhile, we got the latest FDA statement here.
Other Health and Science Buzz
+ Despite NYU's recent decision to provide health care for all of their undergraduates, a new HPV (the virus that causes genital warts, cervical cancer) vaccine will not be included in the plan. Promiscuous students with private insurance to breathe collective sigh of relief.
+ Transgendered New Yorkers! Wish you were born a boy or girl but weren't? Well now you can be/could have been/were.
+ Eating a bag of potato chips every day is bad for you.
+ Walking is not exercise. WTF?
+ Send your sweetheart a real nerdy love note.
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My husband and I have continued to eat our spinach. We're buying from local farmers, which is what we try and do all the time. That's one really great benefit about living in NYC. It's possible to buy local. (Visit your local farmer's market!)
I think Bin Laden is behind the E Coli scare. He is trying to kill us all my lowering our iron levels.
I'll see you soon....muahahahaha!
Start eating spinach else Bin Laden/al-Qaeda will win.
"How did a bacteria that normally romps around our bowels make its way to our favorite iron-filled flora?"
Easy answer: The spinach crops were fertilized with cow manure, which contained e. Coli bacteria. This is a common practice on large corporatized farms, but no one seems to care until consumers get sick. One more reason to support your local, mom-and-pop farms.
I'm with #1 mihow. i buy my goods from whole foods for local farm markets where you know what you're getting. bagged spinach? are you kidding? buy your veggies with dirt on em and you know they're good to go (just wash em when you get home).
Um.. the amount of poeple getting sick from spinach is WAY LESS than the number of people who get e. coli from BEEF.. how come we dont hear all the time about people getting sick and dying from beef? the ONE TIME spinach gets infected, the media goes crazy.. wtf do they not ever go after the beef industry?
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man
I grow spinach on the land
I'll eat saag paneer
and get diarrhea
And spend my days on the can!
"Um.. the amount of poeple getting sick from spinach is WAY LESS than the number of people who get e. coli from BEEF.. how come we dont hear all the time about people getting sick and dying from beef? the ONE TIME spinach gets infected, the media goes crazy.. wtf do they not ever go after the beef industry?"
Couldn't agree with you more, J. You've opened yourself up for an attack, however. Beefeaters are touchy about their right to kill something for every meal.
Some folks don't even know they're sick. Many people think it's perfectly normal to have the squirts once a week.
Ah! What damage does a good squirt really have? I feel pretty cleansed afterwards. Actually, whenever I get that toughness feeling in the bottom of my stomach (i.e. can't crap for shit)I'll just reach for a nice rare-bloody burger. That should do the trick!
There really is a lot of ignorance around this issue.
A couple of points:
- There are two types of E.Coli that we should be aware of in discussing this. First is the one referred to above that occurs in our & bovine lower digestive tracts, that is killed by the acids in our stomachs. This is not the E.Coli that is indicated in this outbreak. The second type -- which is indicated herein is one that arises in the digestive tracts of cows that are fed grains such as corn (as most cows are in this country). Cows are not "used" to eating this as food (they graze on grasses).
- The reporting, by-and-large, does not make this distinction and makes it seem like this is an issue with the way that the food is grown or fertilized. This is not the case. The food is irrigated from streams, that contain runoffs from dairy & cattle farms. This is not simply an issue of "organic" producers using manure as fertilizer, but agriculture in general not being able to use streams for irrigation because of runoffs that pollute the water supply in the way described above.
Here's a very good Op-Ed piece from last week that goes into this. You might also dig up the recent issue of The Nation guest-edited by Alice Waters.There goes Kapil again. You don't have to be promiscuous to get HPV.
People, this is just a blog. Its lack of standards is obvious every day in moments like that "promiscuous" comment. We read it for pleasure and we shouldn't expect the objectivity level of the Times. I was surprised & pissed at that too, but you know, I'm not going to stop reading gothamist because of it. I'm just going to mentally add this writer to the ones I'll hopefully remember to skip over...