The new year brings new guesses as to what will be the next big food thing, when really it’s just an exercise in food porn.

And sometimes dangerous.

The Epoch Times predicts that grass fed meat will be hot because blah… blah … blah … oh, “grass-fed is virtually free from the threat of E. coli outbreaks – another major plus for meat-eaters.”

No it’s not:  handle and cook carefully, and use a damn thermometer (Last night I was having dinner with mom-in-law and Sorenne at a steakhouse while Amy was doing French club stuff at this conference in Vancouver. When the server asked how I wanted Sorenne’s sliders, I said, 165F. When she asked how I wanted my steak I said, 140F. She insisted they had a thermometer out back but …).

And from the New Zealand Herald, in advice every pregnant woman should ignore, the author says it’s false that “pregnant women should avoid eating unpasteurized cheeses, shellfish and other “edgy” foods.”

They’re not edgy, they’re microbiolgically dangerous because the immune system of expectant moms is ratcheted down by a factor of 10 to avoid harming the fetus. To say that rates of listeriosis are lower in France where pregnant woman eat unpasteurized cheese (and this applies to any refrigerated, ready-to-eat foods) is to ignore deficiencies in surveillance and that one of the largest cheese producers said it was switching to all pasteurized in 2008 because it didn’t want any more bodies – born or unborn.