Some consumers stopped buying green onions after they were blamed for an outbreak of hepatitis last year. Roma tomatoes may have caused a five-state salmonella outbreak recently, so others will likely give them up, as well.
People tend to associate foodborne illness with undercooked meats and raw eggs or unpasteurized milk, and those certainly can cause illness. But less well recognized is the reality that fruits and vegetables not properly prepared have always posed risks for those who eat them.
Experts say an increasing number — even, perhaps, most — of the cases of so-called food poisoning originated with fruits and vegetables.
Rather than give them up, food handling experts say, people should learn how to prepare them.
No fresh produce from the store is "ready to eat," according to Linda Bogdanow, foodborne disease epidemiologist at the Salt Lake Valley Health Department. It all must be cleaned and stored properly to avoid such nasty illnesses as salmonella, shigella, cyclospora, E. coli, campylobacter and other ills.
"Boil it, cook it, peel it or forget it" is the advice given to avoid typhoid fever — a foodborne illness — on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Foodnet Web site. It's advice that goes well beyond typhoid.
One simple solution is washing fresh fruits and vegetables thoroughly before eating them, although it won't kill all pathogens, said Bogdanow. And washing your hands thoroughly and often.
Many pathogens, both bacterial and viral, can cause illness. Often it results from undercooking or improperly handling food at home or in restaurants, from fresh meat to cut-up lettuce, she said.
Although the numbers are staggering — the CDC estimates as many as 76 million foodborne illnesses each year — they're also likely an undercount. Although about 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths get documented annually, studies suggest only one in 38 cases of foodborne illness reported. Most people attribute gastrointestinal distress, a common sign of foodborne illness, to a "touch of stomach flu, which doesn't exist," Bogdanow said.
In serious cases, the entire immune system can be compromised. Arthritis may be a lasting souvenir of a bout with certain foodborne illnesses, including shigella and at least one form of salmonella, according to the CDC, most likely because of a genetic predisposition.
What makes produce potentially dangerous? Lots of things.
Sometimes workers don't wash their hands properly when picking and shipping products. And some of the pathogens, including listeria, live quite happily in soil and water, alongside fruits and vegetables, which are then contaminated. Even household pets can get into a home garden and contaminate it, so growing your own doesn't mean you can skip the washing. Then there's the toddler who doesn't wash and touches everything, the kitty who jumps on the counter where you prepare dinner, the swimmer who picks fruit on his way home from the creek, the irrigation water that courses through cow manure and . . . it's a long list.
Bogdanow has learned over the years to let the water run over the produce that's being washed. If you put produce in a tub of water, it just swims in whatever contaminant might be around. Running water over it flushes it away.
And the fact that you don't eat a rind or peel doesn't mean that fruit can skip the shower. Cantaloupe and watermelon both sit in dirt and are exposed to water, either of which may be contaminated. When you slice a melon without washing it, you could be slicing through the bacteria or virus and delivering it to the part you will eat.
That orange you have to peel? Wash it. It's been handled by other people. And you'll take any contaminants on its skin straight to your mouth when you eat it.
The good news is that most supermarket chains now make growers and suppliers use food safety programs that have outside auditors, according to the Associated Press.
But no one's inspecting the hands of the consumers who pinch, squeeze and tap the produce each day at the grocery store or fruit stand.
E-mail: lois@desnews.com