Vegetarian Star

In an interview on The Leonard Lopate Show (the audio of which can be heard below), food author and flexitarian Mark Bittman shares a concern about getting sick from prepared, bagged produce that most of the public would naturally have after hearing of the outbreaks of illnesses over the years. Although he recommends a salad a day, he’s not so sure that salad should come from a bag.

“My only concern with the bagged stuff is whether or not it’s going to poison you or not. The convenience of cut up vegetables…what could be more convenient than that, as long as you’re not going to get salmonella from that. And I can’t answer that. I’d like to see our food safety system in a place where if people want to buy more conveniently prepared vegetables, they could do so without worrying about it.”

The convenience of bagged fruits and veggies have not come without consequence. There’s the occasional found frog leg in the frozen vegetables. The inedible glass pieces found in frozen peas. However, it’s usually contamination with e. coli or salmonella that leads to widespread sickness and fear of eating things good for you. Just when you thought it was okay to eat bagged spinach again, Consumer Reports recently conducted tests of 16 brands commonly found in stores and found, in the sanitation and contamination levels, there’s room for improvement.

Although no e. coli or salmonella were found on the samples, 39% of them contained unacceptable levels of total coliforms and 23% contained unacceptable levels for enterococcus, two indicators used to guage pathogen contamination. It’s important to note that Consumer Reports used “industry experts” in obtaining the standard, which is “total coliforms or enterococcus is 10,000 or more colony forming units per gram (CFU/g) or a comparable estimate.” The Federal government currently has no limits for these indicator organism for produce, only in water, raw meat, milk and some processed foods.

The most contaminated bags were closer to the sell-by date and Consumer Reports recommends buying produce at least 6 days before that date, or as far away as you can. View the video below for more.

Photo: PR Photos

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