You say tomato, I say salmonella
Raw red tomatoes have consumers seeing red. Pitifully pained people in several states, including Texas, continue to suffer food poisoning via tomatoes tainted with salmonella, a bacteria which can cause diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, fever and abdominal pain. You know, like reading your income tax statement.
In other words, your price for munching a juicy red tomato with your burger or salad may be spending days lurching between your bed and your bathroom – and all because you swallowed rather than switched. Oh, you know tomatoes can be rotten. But no, you eat them anyway, gulping down a familiar food which you trust will be healthy, as it’s been so many times before.
The source of this rotten tomato outbreak isn’t definite, but the Food and Drug Administration does believe one thing: Certain tomatoes remain A-OK. Reportedly, grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes and tomatoes with the vine still attached are safe enough to eat without losing your lunch.
As for off-limits tomatoes, that’s different. To stave off an attack of appetite-killer tomatoes, definitely and positively avoid raw red plum tomatoes, raw red round tomatoes and raw red Roma tomatoes. Also avoid products, such as mixed salads, which may contain those kinds of tomatoes.
Now, even these tomatoes reportedly are healthy to eat if they’ve come from certain states. But the key word here is reportedly. You may reportedly wind up with rotten luck, becoming weak as a kitten, losing 10 pounds and missing days of work.
Really, do you want to take any chance whatsoever? We all are guardians of our bodies – let’s not leave it solely to the FDA. So I know I’m not eating tomatoes at all until this salmonella savagery dies down.
That may be over-reacting, but hey — I’ve had food poisoning before, and when you’ve experienced its relentless miseries, you prefer to err on the side of caution instead of on the side of tasty yet tainted. I haven’t been back to the sandwich shop where I believe I got food poisoning, either. Not ever. And never will. Is that overreacting? Maybe – but I haven’t had food poisoning again since then, and that’s the bottom line.
And so, sorry farmers, but tomatoes, like pepper, parmesan, croutons, beef jerky or candy bars, are an optional food source at any time, and especially now. Why take a chance on a “reportedly” safe tomato when the safest course — as they also say about STDs — is abstinence? So for the time being, stay away from all tomatoes and you won’t get sick from any rotten tomatoes. Simple enough, right?
But if you do get sick, and you know the source, document the details and contact the food poisoning lawyers at Jim S. Adler & Associates. You may have cause to seek legal compensation for food poisoning. Goodness knows it’s not your fault – even if you placed too much belief in the word “reportedly.”
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment