WARNING: Your Leafy Greens May Not Be Safe Even Though They Haven’t Been Recalled

This time, a consumer watchdog group did some random testing and identified a common offender in samples of otherwise healthful food.

Here’s what you need to know about what they discovered.

Listeria was found in samples of leafy greens.

Safety advocacy group Consumer Reports conducted testing on 284 samples of fresh greens and found Listeria monocytogenes, a potentially deadly bacteria, in six of those samples. The contaminated leafy greens were purchased at several chains, including Acme, Costco, Hannaford, and Whole Foods.

Of the six samples that tested positive, two were packaged, prewashed greens – one spinach, and the other, an organic spinach-spring mix.

The other four were loose heads or bunches of green kale, green leaf lettuce, red leaf lettuce, and spinach.

“All of the greens were purchased between June 3 and June 19, 2019, in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York,” according to the organization’s statement.

In the report, CR states that while this study was not large enough to draw conclusions about the safety of specific brands or retailers, it does show that more needs to be done to improve the safety of leafy greens.

“While it may not be surprising to find listeria in a small percentage of leafy green products that are tested, it is always concerning to find bacteria that can make people sick in foods that aren’t meant to be cooked,” says Karen Wong, M.D., medical officer in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch.

There is no need to stop eating leafy greens, CR says. They are packed with nutrients and are an important part of a healthful diet. But, it is important to understand the risks – especially for those who are more susceptible to infection with listeria.

Here’s what to do to decrease your risk of infection.

While it may be impossible to fully avoid exposure to contaminants in food (especially if you dine out), there are things you can do to reduce your risk of infection.

Here’s a list of food safety tips from Foodsafety.gov:

• Do not drink raw (unpasteurized) milk, and do not eat foods that have unpasteurized milk in them.
• Wash hands, knives, countertops, and cutting boards after handling and preparing uncooked foods.
• Rinse raw produce thoroughly under running tap water before eating.
• Keep uncooked meats, poultry, and seafood separate from vegetables, fruits, cooked foods, and ready-to-eat foods.
• Thoroughly cook raw food from animal sources, such as meat, poultry, or seafood to a safe internal temperature.
• Wash hands, knives, countertops, and cutting boards after handling and preparing uncooked foods.
• Consume perishable and ready-to-eat foods as soon as possible.
• Persons in higher risk groups should heat hot dogs, cold cuts, and deli meats before eating them.

In the article Here’s Why There Are SO MANY Food Recalls Lately, Cat Ellis provides additional steps you can take to reduce your risk of becoming ill from foodborne illness:

• Sign up for food recall alerts so you can find out ASAP when there is a food recall.
• Avoid raw foods.
• Make sure to cook all meat thoroughly to their proper internal temperature.
  • Red meats, pork, ham, and seafood – 145°F
  • Poultry – 165°F
  • Eggs – 160°F
• Just because it looks cooked on the outside, doesn’t mean it’s cooked properly on the inside. Don’t guess. Use a meat thermometer.
• Wash all your produce. (Be aware that rinsing off produce will help reduce bacteria on food, but it isn’t a guarantee.)
• Grow your own garden, if possible.
• If you raise your own chickens, get their feces tested for salmonella.
• Source food locally from a small, local grower that takes a real interest in quality.
• If you can, raise your own chickens for meat and eggs, your own meat rabbits, and any of your own livestock.

Gaining more control over where your food comes from can also help keep you safe, Ellis adds:

For people who lack the space or skills to grow their own food and hunt or raise their own meat, check out your local CSA farms and community garden opportunities. Just do an Internet search for “community gardens near me”. If your city or town doesn’t have one, consider starting one.

When you control more of your own food production, you can control how and with what you feed the soil, how you feed and care for your animals, how clean you keep your butchering equipment, and so on. You limit the number of people involved. You limit the number of hands that touch your food. You limit the opportunities for contamination.

From here, you will need to preserve your own food. Invest in a quality canner and canning guide, dehydrator and dehydrating book, and/or a freezer. Learn to lacto-ferment your veggies if you are interested in food preservation that doesn’t rely on any power and will be a great source of gut-healing, immune-enhancing gut probiotics.

I know this sounds like a lot of effort. But, these bacteria and the thousands of yearly hospitalizations they cause are no joke. Ultimately, it’s up to you to secure a safe food source. The government certainly isn’t going to do it, and neither is the food industry. (source)

Here’s what to do if you have potentially contaminated food in your home.