A pomegranate salad, a Frozen Sangria Rita and an oxygen facial.

According to the Arizona Republic, these are the ingredients for a more youthful appearance, and restaurants are jumping on the trend by offering antioxidant-rich dishes.

Annika Stensson, spokeswoman for the National Restaurant Association, said the association recently conducted a survey asking more than 1,200 professional chefs in the United States to list the trendiest items on their menus. Out of almost 200 items, pomegranate finished 16th, fresh fruits were 61st and scallops were 100th. All are foods rich in antioxidants.

The interest in antioxidants also has been transforming beverage lists. Trudy Thomas, director of beverages for Camelback Inn, said the resort created an antioxidant-rich margarita, the Frozen Sangria Rita, after guests expressed interest in red wine's antioxidant qualities.

Since its debut in February, the concoction of red wine, pomegranate and blueberry has been one of the most popular drinks on the menu, she said.

Diane Aiello, owner of Glam Lounge in Scottsdale, said,
 
"I am a huge believer in antioxidants. … When we do an oxygen facial, we can see the person's skin actually changing. The skin is more hydrated, more plump, and lines are softer."

Madonna is said to be a fan.

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Julie Schmit reports in USA Today today that,

Last July, Food and Drug Administration officials issued a rare warning to U.S. consumers: Botulism toxin was suspected in hot dog chili sauce made by Castleberry's Food.

The botulism outbreak, which would eventually sicken eight and lead to a recall of tens of millions of cans of food, was the first in a U.S.-made canned food in 33 years.

The day before the warning, FDA investigators had begun an inspection at a Castleberry's plant that set off alarms within the agency.

A previously undisclosed report from FDA that USA TODAY obtained from a congressional committee concluded:

• two 10-foot-tall cookers may not have heated cans enough to kill all bacteria, including those leading to botulism toxin;

• the cookers had broken alarms, a leaky valve and an inaccurate temperature device;

• the FDA criticized Castleberry's for failing to correct problems, but those problems went undetected by FDA inspectors at the plant five months before the outbreak and by Department of Agriculture inspectors who were in the plant weekly; and,

• the cookers in the Augusta, Ga., plant showed "poor maintenance," and management failed to "correct ongoing deficiencies" in the plant. "Failure in management was ultimately the reason for the … botulinum toxin in the cans," according to the report.

Donald Zink, a senior FDA food scientist, says in the story,

"When you have a firm that fails so badly that they produce cans with Clostridium botulinum … there are invariably multiple process failures, multiple violations … and failed management systems.”

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Barack Obama may be the change candidate but his food safety rhetoric falls into a tired and unsubstantiated pattern.

Obama wrote on Friday in a letter to  Cow Calf Weekly (great reading for the beach),

“America continues to have the safest, most abundant and cheapest food supply in the world. … Beef producers are a key component in a healthy and vibrant rural America. By strengthening USDA and working to enhance food safety and meat processing, my administration will assist the industry in providing a wholesome and safe product to your customers.”

Maybe Barack is using the same PR folks as the Taste of Chicago. And with over 800 people sick from Salmonella in tomatoes and no source in sight, is it really the right time to be making claims about who has the safest food?

Thanks to Kansas State PhD student Charles Dodd for forwarding the item.

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Starpulse.com reports that Mike Myers realized he was ill on his way to his Love Guru premiere in Australia earlier this month and had to stop at a number of restaurants to use restrooms before he actually got to the premiere.

"In Australia, when you go into a drug store you actually have to talk to the pharmacist...I was looking around and I was, like, 'Hi!' 'Hello, you're Mike Myers, how are you? What can I do for you?' (I said) 'I'd like Pepto-Bismol please.' 'We don't know what that is...What is it exactly, Mike?' I was like, 'It's for tummy trouble.'"

But the confused Aussie staffmember at the pharmacy needed him to be more specific, prompting a desperate Myers to reveal he was suffering from diarrhea.

He adds, "(They said) 'How very interesting, you're a superstar with diarrhea.' I'm like, 'Hmmm, don't feel like a superstar right now.'"

No indication if the cause was food or water related, but hey, Mike, we’ve all been there. Not messing around on a bed with Madonna or cavorting with Beyonce, but we’ve all had the runs.

Best Mike Myers role? So many good lines and characters from the Toronto-area funny man, but the best is the Don Cherry-inspired hockey announcer on the vastly underrated Russell Crowe vehicle, Mystery, Alaska.

And that’s Dr. Evil to you. I didn’t spend all those years at Evil University to be Mr. Evil.

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Earlier this month Doug talked about entomophagy, the practice of eating insects as food. It’s no mystery that many cultures eat bugs for nutrition.  However this is not the case for the cultures of the United States and Europe, where not only are bugs unappetizing, but there is an entire market devoted to their extermination.

Western culture has put a certain social taboo on insects in general.  If a cockroach is found in a kitchen of a restaurant, health inspectors will shut the place down.  But who can blame them?  Most Americans are brought up to find bugs disgusting and dirty.

As part of an introductory entomology class in my undergraduate work, I had the chance to try cookies containing dried crickets and salsa containing live mealworms.  I definitely was not excited about tasting either of them, but you would be surprised what some students would do for extra credit.  After sampling the supposedly “tasty treats” I have to admit that they weren’t half bad; in fact they tasted completely normal.

Just as a cook might add tofu to a noodle dish, there is also the option of earthworms or grasshoppers for an extra dose of protein.  And a large number of countries have a booming market for raising insects, just as there is a market here in Kansas for raising beef cattle.

Not only would there be a little more variety in food options, but also the option to “go green” in other ways than driving a hybrid.  Multiple studies and articles have been written about how insects are much more efficient converters of energy compared to typical farm animals.  Bryan Walsh of Time.com has a terrific article about how environmentally friendly insects can be used as a food source.

Now I’ve read the articles too, but the first large hurdle to jump over will be the cultural taboo.  The food industry of Western culture will have a hard time changing “Waiter, waiter, there is a fly in my soup!” into “Waiter, waiter, I do not have enough flies in my soup!”

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As I've blogged before, I'm interested in the intersection of disparate ideas.

Today's intersection relates to the good folks at Barf Blog, and the cross-country adventures of a fellow food safety microbiologist.

Many professional food safety scientist readers of this blog may know Dr. Tom Montville. He's the coauthor of Food Microbiology: An Introduction and co-edited the first two editions of Food Microbiology: Fundamentals and Frontiers.

But the reasons for this post don't have too much to do with food safety, although they do have a lot to do with food, more specifically food security.  And when I say food security, I don't mean defending the food supply against bioterrorism, although this is also one of Dr. Montville’s research interests.  No, when I say food security, I mean it in the original sense, "availability of food and one's access to it".

Tom, you see, has managed to combine two of his passions: food, and riding his bicycle.  He is currently riding his bicycle across the county (west coast to east coast) to raise funds for Elijah's Promise, which began as a small soup kitchen and has since become a multi-service agency that moves people out of poverty.

And (here’s the intersection) he's about to pass within 30 miles of Manhattan, Kansas!

I find his efforts very inspiring, and I hope you will too.  Check out his blog to learn more.

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With four daughters, I’ve changed a lot of diapers over the years.

Almost all the diapers were cloth; at least for the first two children. Then, after too many green apple splatters seeping through, migrated to the seemingly more absorbent disposable diaper.

And then there were the emergency dumps that, well, we’ve all had, regardless of age. On Weeds last night, Nancy Botwin, played by Mary Louise Parker (right), peed into a cup while waiting to cross the Mexican-U.S. border.

Sometimes it’s not nearly that neat.

A reader told The Consumerist yesterday that,

"Last night we were out with friends and went to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory at Bella Terra/Huntington Beach. We were eating outside as my 5 year old daughter got an uncontrollable urge to use the bathroom and began crying and screaming 'diarrhea, diarrhea.' I ran into the store with her in my arms, begging to use the bathroom and they refused multiple times.

“I explained she had diarrhea and couldn't hold it and told them she was about to go on the floor. They refused again and never offered me any alternatives. I begged them to have a heart and that she was 5 but by that time she had lost it all over herself and me. I ran with her in my arms to the movie theater that let me use their bathroom. I cleaned her up, threw out some of her clothes and went back to the Chocolate Factory - asking for names and number of management. I again pleaded with them to use their heart in situations like this.”

Almost a year ago, a similar incident happened at a Jo-Ann Fabrics in Indiana. With similar results.

Today, California’s Orange County Register reported that officials with Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory issued an apology, and that the story sparked a backlash that led to death threats, according to store owner, Bonnie Overturf, who was not there during the incident last Thursday.

Overturf said her employees were following insurance policies for her store, and there were at least a dozen restrooms near the store the mother could have used.

Bryan Merryman, chief operating officer for the Colorado-based candy company, issued an apology to the mother Tuesday, saying "the actions of one franchised store's employees do not represent the values of the company … We truly regret this situation occurred."

"We are a very family friendly company and would never encourage any policy that does not take individual facts and circumstances into account,'' he wrote.

Overturf, who said she apologized to the mother earlier, contacted police once death threats began and her home address was posted on an unknown Website. People also threatened to throw feces at her home, she said.

People shouldn’t throw piles of shit at store owners and their homes; or leave burning bags of poop on the front step. Poop is the source of many pathogens, stores are not all equipped to handle public poop, and some people don’t clean up after themselves (or pick up their dog’s shit).


But when kids (or others) gotta go, it’s better to isolate the mess to a bathroom.

I’ve cleaned up lots of shit. And expect lots more.

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Most would shy away from fugu, or puffer fish, but the Japanese love it. The internal organs and skin of the puffer fish contain a deadly poison called tetradotoxin, which causes paralysis of the diaphragm and death due to respiratory failure. It must be prepared by licensed cooks in order to remove the poisonous areas. Though it’s a dangerous meal, it’s been eaten for centuries.

It’s not just that one-in-one thousand fish are poisonous; each fish comes packed with a dose of death if not properly prepared. Statistics from the Tokyo Bureau of Social Welfare and Public Health indicate 20-44 incidents of fugu poisoning per year between 1996 and 2006 in the entire country, leading to 34-64 hospitalizations and 0-6 deaths per year, for an average fatality rate of 6.8%

Not only is it deadly, but fugu is costly. Most people consider it to have a weak taste, but Japanese gourmets will disagree. Chefs spend 7 to 8 years training in order to be certified to serve this treat.

An outbreak of E.coli in spinach or Salmonella in tomatoes leads to national recalls and mass consumer aversion as products and produce become stigmatized. Yet a fish that is positively poisonous is still sought out in countries like Japan and Taiwan. There is some speculation as to how popular fugu would be if it was known to be completely safe. Would there be a sharp decrease in demand for the dish, or would it continue to be a special meal?

The acceptance of fugu in Japanese culture is completely opposite of the Japanese attitude towards beef with BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) commonly known as mad cow disease. Any meat that is at risk for containing traces of BSE is immediately removed from the food supply. What is the difference between dying from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human variant of BSE, and being poisoned by fish?

Whether it’s the taste of the fish or the thrill of knowing it could be the last meal, I plan to stick to salmon instead.
--
Michelle Mazur is a first-year veterinary student at Kansas State University, hailing from Wichita, Kansas.  She is an avid dog lover, a crafty seamstress, and a bit of a workaholic. She recently spent two weeks in Japan and took a lot of pictures of bathrooms.

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Amy and I were at the expecting-a-baby doctor today, and I started telling her about yet another take on the my-tomatoes-are-safe-cause-they’re-local-so-buy-them story from Tennessee.

Some locals farmers told Volunteer TV they,

“… even use fertilizer that comes from the ground rather than a store. Their fertilizers are made up of layers of manure, weeds and hay.

"It helps in killing off the bad bacteria. The worms are working through, turning it into the pure soils all around. The composting happens naturally."

Such statements really need to be verified through microbial testing.

Another farmer said,

"The guinea come through and we let them. They'll walk through the garden and they don't eat any of the vegetables, they just eat bugs."

The woman beside us in the doctor waiting room said her father used to have guineas in their garden and it worked real well for bug control.

I pointed out the guineas were also Salmonella factories and would be increasing the dangerous bug load in the gardens growing that fresh produce.

She said they used to have chickens at her farm, but got rid of them cause she got tired of the mess – the poop mess. Then we talked tornadoes.

But lots of others are still talking tomatoes.

Jeff Wilson, Mississippi State University Extension Service, told local media that, “locally grown tomatoes are most likely safe,” but didn’t say why. Maybe he was misquoted.

Meanwhile, I got to make more friends by telling Forbes that washing off produce is a good precaution, but won't necessarily safeguard you from a foodborne illness, nor will only buying locally grown fruits and vegetables from the farmers' market,

“At the farm level, produce can be contaminated in a variety of ways, including contact with untreated manure, infected or polluted water, workers with poor hygiene habits or unclean storage or transportation facilities, Powell says. While local farms may use less transportation and fewer workers, the chances for contamination are still there. And since fresh produce is, of course, uncooked, anything that comes into contact with it can taint it. Once E. coli or Salmonella gets inside a leafy green, tomato or sprout, it's hard to get rid of it.”

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