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Last week Sainsbury’s recalled its own-brand salads over fears that watercress had been contaminated with a rather nasty form of food poisoning – six people needed hospital treatment. Last year, we investigated the dangers of bugs in bagged salad and found that the food poisoning bacteria E.coli could be present in as many as one in 20 supermarket-bought salad leaves.
Levels were enough to cause illness. Most people are careful when it comes to meat, fish and eggs but just throw salad from the bag to a bowl.
Poisoned plants: One in 20 bagged salads bought in the supermarket could contain E.coli strain O157
I know salad bags say ‘wash first’, but how dangerous is it not to?
E.coli is a harmless resident of our gut – what is often termed ‘friendly bacteria’. The strain that caused this current and other outbreaks is called E.coli O157 and it is highly toxic to humans. When this strain enters the gut, it causes severe gastroenteritis.
Six per cent of people go on to develop a life-threatening kidney failure called haemolytic uraemic syndrome. Infections such as E.coli O157 are transmitted to humans by eating contaminated foods. For salad to be affected, it must have been contaminated directly by waste. Iceberg lettuces are often grown in soil-free environments, but even this is no protection. The risk is from water used for irrigation, for example.
If there is E.coli lurking in salad, will a simple rinse under the tap be enough to get rid of it?
The Health Protection Agency advises that all salad should be washed thoroughly by immersing in cold water, and also must not be contaminated by raw meat. Storage of vegetables is key: if salad bags are in the fridge and the temperature is less than four degrees, bacteria will not multiply as rapidly.
Care to clean: Ensure that all bought salad leaves are washed thoroughly before you eat them
What about other foods you eat raw?
Without scaremongering, there are plenty of different types of food poisoning from raw food, but hygienic practices and food standards protect us most of the time.
Listeria is possible from meat and salmonella is usually picked up from eating contaminated raw meat, eggs or dairy produce. The reason that these outbreaks make headlines is that thankfully they are not common. There are only about 200 cases a year of listeria in the UK.
I’ve had an E.coli urine infection before. Is that anything to do with food?
No it’s not. E.coli is the most common cause of bacterial urine infections in women in the UK, accounting for more than 70 per cent of cases. This is from self-contamination, as in women everything is rather close together anatomically.
To be completely blunt, this is why little girls should always be told ‘wipe from front to back’. Fortunately, this strain is not related to O157 and is simple to treat.
There is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. With the mass processing of food, the supply chain is still susceptible to contamination, as supposedly happened with this watercress, and we can’t be blase about that. When you look at figures over the past few years for food poisoning, rates of certain illnesses such as salmonella have steadily reduced, while O157 has increased. This is more to do with farming processes and contamination than our own immunity to these diseases.
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