Can Spinach Be Bad For You?

The other night I watched part of a CNN Special Report on "Poisoness Food". The topic of discussion was tainted food...specifically a batch of baby spinach. After the fact, it was discovered that the spinach was tainted with E Coli bacteria. It made over 200 people sick, nation wide and 3 people died.

Some of the people interviewed included the parents of a 2 year old girl who became ill after eating the spinach. The E Coli attacked her system to such a degree that she ended up in kidney failure and almost died. It was shocking to listen to.

It seems that the spinach was all traced back to one field in California. The investigators explained that bagged leafy greens are at particular risk for these types of outbreaks. The greens are "triple washed" and processed in large batches, and then bagged afterwards. Due to this process, a problem that was isolated to a very small area in one field can end up spread throughout various bags of spinach and then shipped all over the country. That is exactly what happened in this story.

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration in the USA) perform random testing in the farming industry...but they claim that not EVERYTHING can be tested. Some farms are only tested once per year. This leaves a lot of room for things to slip through the cracks.

Apparently, the strain of E Coli that was the contaminate in this case is extremely aggressive. It is particularly harmful to the very young and the very old. It would take only 100 bacteria to make you sick after a very short time because of the rapid rate at which they multiply.

There is speculation as to where the contamination came from. It could have been from nearby animals grazing, an impure water source, or untreated manure.

More frighteningly, washing does not kill E Coli. Even washing in a diluted chlorine solution does not kill it. The only way to kill it is by cooking, or a fairly new radiation type process which is not yet widely accepted. When you eat fresh vegetables, you are actually more at risk than when you eat meat, because generally speaking, meat is cooked. Vegetables go right from field to table. Buying organic doesn't help either. This can occur in organic produce as well.

The reason I found this so scary is because you think you are doing something healthy for your family..for your children..by feeding them something like spinach. What is a person to do if the spinach you are buying can be deadly?!

There are a couple of things that I took away from this that makes me feel as though I have
some control over our destiny. The report highlighted Costco because they have a requirement that all produce be tested for E Coli before they even accept it into their warehouses. They also have their own system of internal testing in place on top of that requirement. This gives a bit of added security that any tainted food would be caught before reaching their shelves. You can also be pretty certain that anything that you grow yourself is also going to be safe.

So, you are going to see me shopping at Costco a lot, and you are also going to see me very busy in my garden this summer!