If the recent cases of food poisoning made you paranoid about the cleanliness of the food you are having and made you scared for your overall tummy health, try to consider the tips of a food poisoning expert-especially the food he will never ever eat for precaution.
In his 20 years of litigating food-borne diseases career, Bill Marler has sorted 6 foods that he has cut from his diet permanently through an article he wrote and posted in the Food Poisoning Journal on Saturday.
1. Raw sprouts
Even if its lightly cooked, Marler makes sure he would not consume this because of the numerous cases of salmonella poisoning throughout the years. He cited 30 bacterial outbreaks during the mid 90's and the 19 cases back in 2014.
"There have been too many outbreaks to not pay attention to the risk of sprout contamination," Marler said. "Those are products that I just don't eat at all."
2. Prewashed or precut fruits and vegetables
"I avoid these like the plague," Marler said. For the food poisoning expert, nothing is best than buying natural, whole and uncut produce from the market. The less it is processed, the less it is exposed to different things that increases the potential danger to your health.
"We've gotten so used to the convenience of mass-produced food-bagged salad and boxed salads and precut this and precut that," Marler says. "Convenience is great but sometimes I think it isn't worth the risk."
3. Rare meat
Sorry for sushi and sashimi lovers, but Marler considers the raw fish meat to be one of the foods most prone to bacteria infestation. According to him, uncooked or undercooked meat-whether fish, pork, beef and chicken, can carry E.coli, Salmonela and other bacteria that causes food poisoning. As a safety measure, the meat should be cooked to 160 degrees, to make sure that the bacteria in the food are dead and it is safe to eat. That's why Marler likes his steaks and burgers well-done.
"The reason ground products are more problematic and need to be cooked more thoroughly is that any bacteria that's on the surface of the meat can be ground inside of it," Marler said.
4. Unpasteurized milk and juices
Back in 1996, Marler represented several children who were diagnosed with Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome, a complication caused by consumption of E.coli infested food that may lead to kidney failure. The children got the HUS from unpasteurized Odwalla apple juice. After due proceedings, the company was found liable two years later and was fined with $12 Million to its victims in 2000.
"There's no benefit big enough to take away the risk of drinking products that can be made safe by pasteurization," Marler said.
5. Raw oysters
"Oysters are filter feeders, so they pick up everything that's in the water," he explains. "If there's bacteria in the water it'll get into their system, and if you eat it you could have trouble. I've seen a lot more of that over the last five years than I saw in the last 20 years. It's simply not worth the risk."
Though it may be a popular appetizer, Marler notes that "warming temperatures in the ocean can produce more microbial growth and could be the reason for the increase in foodborne illnesses from raw shellfish."
6. Raw eggs
Despite the decrease of salmonella poisoning caused by raw eggs intake in the last 20 years, Marler still vows to thoroughly cook his eggs.
Bill Marler is currently part of the ongoing litigation against Chipotle Mexican Grill, after numerous cases of E.coli and Norovirus were reported. He has gained his credibility after winning more than an accumulated amount of fine of $600 Million for clients since 1993.
