Every time I’m interviewed about food safety stuff, the reporter will ask, “What can consumers do to protect themselves?”

Nothing?

It’s a lousy answer but often the truthiest one.

In that ConAgra Banquet Pot Pie outbreak that sickened 400 with Salmonella, Amy Reinert said she cooked the pot pie – at the time proclaiming ‘Ready in 4 minutes’ -- for her daughter for 7 minutes in the microwave, then 10 minutes in a conventional oven to make the crust crispy. Yet Isabelle still got sick.

Now, the company says, consumers need to use a meat thermometer to ensure their 50-cent pot pie won’t make them barf.

These stories and more are covered in a food safety feature in the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Nutrition Action publication this month. It’s a comprehensive retelling of some food safety lowlights of the past four years that ends, as usual, with a bunch of things consumers can do to protect themselves.

I said,

“Everyone in industry and government says consumers have to do more, which is just silly. Controlling these kinds of contamination shouldn’t be a consumer problem. Producers and industry need to do better.”

The story is soft on spinach and leafy green producers – why did it take 29 outbreaks before industry took microbial food safety issues seriously – and appropriately harsh on the Ponzi scheme of food safety audits.

Mansour Samadpour said,

“These third-party inspections have become an industry that churns out meaningless certificates. Companies pay somebody $1,200 to come in and look at this paper and that paper and then give the company a certificate that says they passed by 96 percent.”

I’m no fan of economic estimates of foodborne illness. The numbers are somewhat fantastical and the assumptions behind the numbers are usually oblique and obscured.

I’m also not a fan of whining.

In response to a study released earlier this week by the Pew Charitable Foundation's Produce Safety Project, which pegged the annual cost of foodborne illness at $152 billion and which Chapman has already taken to task, United Fresh Produce Association president Tom Stenzel said,

“It’s really a shame that, once again, advocates for food safety legislative reform are stoking unneeded anxiety about produce safety. This report inappropriately lumps together data from all foods and all food contamination events, including those at church picnics and cross-contamination after sale to the consumer. There’s no data on illnesses actually related to contamination from the farm, which is a much smaller subset cause of foodborne illness. … The fresh produce industry is working tirelessly to grow and market the safest possible products. We strongly support national government oversight of produce safety standards to ensure a science-based, commodity-specific approach no matter where a product is grown. What’s harmful about tactics like this is that advocates are actually scaring consumers away from the very products they need to be consuming more of for better health.”

Dude, you need a better writer. And an editor.

Rather than complain, why not advertize and market all the outstanding food safety efforts your members are undertaking, at retail, so concerned consumers, who have heard a thing or two about produce-related outbreaks over the past 20 years, can make their buying decisions based on evidence rather than faith? Make your testing data public. And stop whining.

Grocery shopping is one of my favourite activities. I love perusing the aisles, checking out foods I’ve never seen before, and examining food labels. Almost automatically I flip over the package and take a gander at the food label, curious to see what is in my potential purchase.

It seems I am not alone in my label love. A recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration survey found that the majority of consumers read food labels, and are aware of the link between good nutrition and health.

The 2008 U.S. Health and Diet Survey of more than 2,500 adults from all 50 states and the District of Columbia found that, for the first time, more than half of those surveyed “often” read a label the first time they buy a product. Yet, while the number of consumers reading a food label the first time they buy a product has risen, consumers are skeptical of industry claims such as “low fat,” “high fiber,” or “cholesterol free” on the front of packages.

While not all shoppers are label lovers, the survey does indicate the opportunity to use food packaging as an information source for consumers. Placing warnings on food packages for susceptible populations is a way to get food safety messages to at risk populations.

Italian restaurants are best when dining with little kids. Maybe it’s a cultural stereotype, but I always found Italian eateries were more welcoming to the screaming, barfing and flirting that toddlers bring to the dining experience.

French restaurants? The worst.

Proponents of doggie dining often state that restaurants allow germ-spewing little kids inside so why not dogs?

Richard Vines of Bloomberg decided to check on the acceptability of children at London’s fancy foodie restaurants. Vines called 30 establishments, asking if a pair of kids aged 2 and 7 would be admitted, whether there were high chairs and about the availability of special menus. With few exceptions, each was child friendly.

Among the responses:

L’Anima: “Yes, we allow children. We have high chairs. When you come here we can arrange something with the chef.”

What if your kid hates high chairs for anything more than 3 minute stretches?

Bob Ricard: “We’re not allowing children under 10 years old. There are no special menus.”

The Ivy: “It’s fine. Any age. We have high chairs. We can adapt dishes for children.”

Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley: “Children are welcome but if kids get a bit restless and unhappy you might be asked to take them outside for a while. We can arrange a high chair if you let us know in advance. Our team can adjust the dishes for children.”

Restaurant Gordon Ramsay: “Children are welcome but babies are not recommended because the restaurant is quite small so we don’t have space for high chairs or push chairs.” What age would be OK? “I would say maybe seven or 10 years onwards. We don’t have kids’ menus but we will be able to offer something suitable.”

I find so-called fancy food is lost on little kids. They’d rather eat the crayons at Chuck-E-Cheese, although those places seem prone to violence.

The most mentioned simple food for kids was something around $7 for a bowl of pasta; who can afford that? That's Sorenne (above, right)  in a gratuitious food porn shot with a simple bowl of rotini and a homemade tomato-veggie sauce during the U.S.-Canada hockey debacle Sunday night. Tonight, we’re going upscale with grilled tuna loins, although Sorenne will be again wearing her Ovechkin jersey (left) as Russia takes on Canada in the Olympic quarter-finals.