Bagged Salads a Gamble Not Worth Taking, Expert Says.

AScribe Health News Service, September, 2006

Byline: Michigan State University

EAST LANSING, Mich., Sept. 15 (AScribe Newswire) -- Think of bagged salads as a game of chance - one in which the odds are stacked against you.

Prewashed packaged vegetables, like the spinach that is the focus of the recent outbreak of E. coli, always have been viewed with suspicion from experts in foodborne illness because it's a packaging system that inherently increases the risk of spreading germs.

Thomas Whittam, Michigan State University Hannah Distinguished Professor of microbial evolution, said the combination of E. coli's durability and power - as few as 10 cells can cause illness - with a mixture of produce from many plants creates the potential for a veritable stew of food poisoning.

E....

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.