As Walmart, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods recall salads, here's what a food-poisoning expert says you should avoid buying
- Salads from Walmart, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's have been recalled due to listeria and salmonella concerns.
- This is just the latest recall in what foodborne-illness attorney Bill Marler calls a "crazy" year for salmonella and food-poisoning outbreaks more generally.
- After years of experience with food poisoning, Marler has cut some dishes out of his diet completely.
- Here are the foods that Marler refuses to eat.
Another recall is sweeping America due to salmonella and listeria concerns.
The food suppliers GHSE, Prime Deli Corporation, Mary's Harvest Fresh Foods, and GH Foods CA recalled a combined 2,811 pounds of ready-to-eat salads, the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced Wednesday. The salads were sold at chains including Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Walmart, and 7-Eleven.
The recall is just the latest in a year that has been packed with food-poisoning outbreaks.
"This year has been nuts," foodborne-illness attorney Bill Marler told Business Insider earlier in 2018, drawing comparison to political news in the Trump era. "There's so much crazy s--- ... all the time."
In an article by Health Insider from BottomLine and in conversations with Business Insider, Marler identified certain foods that he avoids — and that others should be wary of as well.
Here are the foods that this expert says scare him the most:
Pre-cut fruit and veggies
Pre-cut vegetables, like the salads at the center of the current recall, is at the top of Marler's list of foods to avoid.
The process of pre-cutting and packaging produce is a "great way to multiply bugs," he told Business Insider. Convenience may be nice, but because more people handling and processing the food means more chances for contamination, it isn't worth the risk.
"Raw water"
Marler told Business Insider that the idea that he would have to warn people against drinking unfiltered, untreated water didn't cross his mind until this year.
"Almost everything conceivable that can make you sick can be found in water," Marler said.
So-called "raw water" — even from the cleanest streams — can contain animal feces, spreading Giardia, an intestinal infection that includes symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhea and results in roughly 4,600 hospitalizations a year.
E. coli, cholera, and hepatitis A, which led to 20 deaths last year in an outbreak in California, can also be spread through untreated water.
Raw sprouts
Sprout-related outbreaks are surprisingly common, with more than 30 bacterial outbreaks— primarily salmonella and E. coli — in the past two decades.
"There have been too many outbreaks to not pay attention to the risk of sprout contamination," Marler says. "Those are products that I just don't eat at all."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider