Guess what's coming to Guess what's coming to dinner?dinner?

E. coli and other nasty bugs make up to E. coli and other nasty bugs make up to seven million Canadians sick each year. seven million Canadians sick each year.

Here’s how to give these uninvited guests Here’s how to give these uninvited guests the slip the slip By Jacqueline HennessyBy Jacqueline Hennessy

www.chatelaine.comwww.chatelaine.com

Guess what's coming to dinner?Guess what's coming to dinner?

• Anne Nickerson doesn't flinch at words such as E. coli and salmonella. And she's got more reason to than most. Eleven years ago, her daughter, Lauren, suffered kidney failure as a result of E. coli poisoning. The culprit? An undercooked burger at a picnic. But even after more than a decade of providing support – and a kidney – to her daughter, this Vancouver mother has a simple message: foodborne illness is pretty darn easy to avoid.

• Cutting burgers in half to ensure that there's no pink inside and that juices run clear is just one of the many tricks Nickerson uses. It's a smart move, says Jeff Farber, director of the bureau of microbial hazards at the food directorate of Health Canada: "Everyone from farm to government to table has a role to play in food safety." Still, it's estimated that up to seven million Canadians fall victim to bacteria such as campylobacter, listeria and E. coli every year. And while many think they're only suffering from the flu – since symptoms are similar – a small percentage can go on to experience chronic conditions such as arthritis or paralysis, even death, making it ever more crucial to know which bacteria hide where – and how to prevent them from invading your favourite foods. "You don't need to be afraid of foodborne illness," says Nickerson, "just informed."

CantaloupesCantaloupes

• You can sniff them, squeeze them, even look upon their cup size with envy, but don't ever cut into a cantaloupe without washing it first. The reason? We eat it raw and it grows on the ground: the same ground where farmers may spread uncomposted manure or contaminated irrigation water, or where birds poop. Plus, cantaloupe has a rough netted surface that can trap bacteria. That's why in 2001 and 2002, Mexican cantaloupes laced with salmonella sickened many Canadians and killed two people in the U.S.

Bug busting - Bug busting - CantaloupesCantaloupes

• Choose cantaloupes free of cracks and bruises, which could allow bacteria living on the surface to penetrate the flesh inside.

• Before cutting, scrub the whole fruit thoroughly under hot water with a clean produce brush.

• Wash your hands, cutting board and utensils before and after handling cantaloupe. Once cantaloupe is cut, refrigerate it within two hours.

Cooked RiceCooked Rice

• Look at it: so inoffensive and polite. But turn your back on it and rice isn't so nice. That's because a bacterium in soil, known as bacillus cereus, loves to hitch a ride on this grain and pepper it with bacteria-producing spores. The catch is, cooking can't destroy the spores, and if you leave your cooked rice out more than a couple of hours, the bacteria may not only flourish but also pump out poisons that can cause severe stomach cramps, nausea and diarrhea.

Bug Busting – Cooked RiceBug Busting – Cooked Rice

• Refrigerate your leftover rice immediately to keep it below 4C.

• Cook rice with meal – not ahead of time!

Chicken NuggetsChicken Nuggets

• One might expect breasts to attract all the attention, but it's actually the nuggets that have been making headlines. In 2003, frozen nuggets were linked to an outbreak of salmonellosis in B.C., where more than a dozen people became ill. Nuggets and strips aren't more contaminated than any other chicken shape – their preformed white insides are just better at fooling us into believing they've been precooked, when in fact they're often raw or only partially cooked.

Bug Busting – Chicken Nuggets Bug Busting – Chicken Nuggets

• Always follow the cooking instructions. If you throw away the box, keep the directions on your fridge door.

• Bake chicken nuggets in the oven until they're steaming hot on the inside.

ChickenChicken

• Hey, who doesn't love chicken? Problem is, so do salmonella and E. coli, which were found hanging out on the carcasses of 21 per cent of broiler chickens and 20 to 23 per cent of young turkeys in a Canadian Food Inspection Agency survey. Chicken is also a magnet for campylobacter, a leading cause of foodborne illness in Canada.

• And those free-range birds aren't necessarily the cleaner flower children of the chicken world. "Bacteria will be just as happy growing on organic or free-range birds," says Doug Powell, director of the Food Safety Network at the University of Guelph in Ontario.

• But at least organic poultry says no to antibiotics, which can wreak havoc upon the good bacteria that keep the bad in check, says molecular geneticist Roger Wheatcroft of the food research program at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. If you become infected by one of the 12 per cent of chickens – conventional, not organic – contaminated with antibiotic-resistant E. coli, you'll have fewer treatment options.

Bug Busting - ChickenBug Busting - Chicken

• Choose well-wrapped chicken from the bottom of the case, where the temperature is coolest. Be sure to check the best-before date.

• Protect yourself and other purchases by bagging poultry before putting it in your cart.

• Ask that your chicken be placed in a separate bag from your produce in case the poultry juices leak, says Catherine Semple, a food microbiologist at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

• When you arrive home, if the packaging of your poultry has been punctured, transfer the chicken to a resealable bag or container. Keep it up to three days in the refrigerator.

• Don't waste time bathing your bird in the sink. You won't wash off all the bacteria. Instead, pop it directly in its roasting pan. Cook whole chicken until it reaches an internal temperature of 83C; chicken pieces, 77C.

Cold CutsCold Cuts

• Cold meats are eaten, well, cold. And nothing tolerates the cold better than listeria, which can grow in climates such as the one inside your fridge or grocer's deli case. According to Kalidas Shetty, a professor of food science at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, listeria may hang out on the knives, slicers and cutting boards of meat processors and delis and potentially contaminate any meat that touches them.

Bug Busting – Cold CutsBug Busting – Cold Cuts

• Choose delis where business is steady so the meat doesn't stick around long.

• Only buy as much as you can eat within two days.

• Check the best-before date on pre-packaged cuts.

EggsEggs

• Times have changed since Mom made her caesar salad with raw egg. "We now know that salmonella can be found inside an egg and not just on the shell," says Farber. Although the likelihood of salmonella turning up inside your egg is extremely slim – an estimated one in a million – based on the number of eggs produced each year that still leaves almost 6,000 eggs that could contain salmonella surprise.

Bug Busting - EggsBug Busting - Eggs

• If you're shopping in a large grocery chain, look for the term "grade…" on the carton, which ensures the eggs have passed through a federally registered grading station. You're best to ask to see the original box at smaller markets, since hobby farmers may reuse old cartons. According to Jim Chan, manager of Toronto Public Health's food safety program, you'll know the ones that haven't gone through this safeguard by the blood, feces, feathers and number of cracks sometimes found on ungraded eggs at farmer's markets or small grocers.

• Always eat eggs by their best-before date. Cartons that don't have an expiry date are another tipoff that the eggs haven't been inspected.

Ground MeatGround Meat

• It's convenient. It's cheap. And it's as attractive to bugs as a Jungle Gym is to third graders. The reason? Ground meat, including everything from turkey to pork, has so much more surface area for bacteria to play on and multiply.

Bug Busting – Ground MeatBug Busting – Ground Meat

• Check the best-before date(today's, preferably)and look for the freshest meat. Freeze raw meat right away or cook within 24 hours of purchase.

• Check the thermometer in the supermarket meat case. "If stored above 4C, many of these bugs can multiply, doubling every 20 minutes," says Rose Soneff, community nutrition co-ordinator for public health, Interior Health, in Kamloops, B.C.

• For the drive home, stash a small cooler in your trunk or back seat to store meat.

• Wash your hands before and after handling any meat, eggs or produce: scrub in warm soapy water for 30 seconds. Then dry with a paper towel.

• Make your burgers no more than 1.5 centimetres thick or they'll burn before their internal temperature gets hot enough(71C for beef; 80C for poultry)to kill all bugs.

• Use an instant-read food thermometer

Raw SproutsRaw Sprouts

• Between 1995 and 2001, alfalfa sprouts infected at least 375 Canadians with salmonella – and health-food types have been crying in their kashi ever since. Sprouts loom on the food-risk radar for several reasons: first, because we eat them raw; second, because their seed coats have tiny cracks and crevices that can harbour bacteria, making them difficult to wash thoroughly; and third, their warm, wet growing conditions are the pathogenic equivalent of dimming the lights and throwing on a Barry White cd – they get bugs multiplying like crazy.

Bug Busting – Raw SproutsBug Busting – Raw Sprouts

• Canada's Food Safety Network advises that the only safe sprout is a fully cooked one. If you must indulge, Health Canada recommends them only for healthy teenagers and adults: look for fresh crisp alfalfa sprouts with the bud attached, and avoid those that are dark or musty-smelling.

OystersOysters

• Imagine you were an oyster, sucking in water all day to filter your favourite food, plankton. Now imagine getting a daily side dish of toxins from algae and bacteria from such things as human sewage – all of which concentrate inside you. Nice, huh? This shellfish is getting its revenge through norovirus(think Norwalk), hepatitis A virus and vibrio bacteria, a species that, according to Farber, frolicks in summer off our coasts and makes its way to us through raw or undercooked shellfish.

• Bug Busting: • • "It's such a high-risk activity that it's just common sense not to eat

raw oysters," says Farber. But if you must eat them, Chan suggests buying them at a reputable store or restaurant with federally approved shellfish. Look for popular restaurants that have been around for a while – if they were making people sick, they wouldn't be in business.

Bug Busting - OytersBug Busting - Oyters

• "It's such a high-risk activity that it's just common sense not to eat raw oysters," says Farber. But if you must eat them, Chan suggests buying them at a reputable store or restaurant with federally approved shellfish. Look for popular restaurants that have been around for a while – if they were making people sick, they wouldn't be in business.

Prewashed SaladPrewashed Salad

• Triple-washed greens aren't like a bag of Doritos you can just dump into a bowl. Even though the product is prewashed, not all food handlers practise good personal hygiene and can contaminate produce during packaging, according to officials at the Newfoundland and Labrador Public Health Association. A series of E. coli, hepatitis A and salmonella outbreaks in the U.S., traced to prewashed lettuce, proves the point.

Bug Busting – Prewashed SaladBug Busting – Prewashed Salad

• Wash greens one leaf at a time under running water: the friction from the moving water is better at removing bacteria and chemical residues than just soaking.