My favorite meal includes a New York strip steak, asparagus, mashed potatoes, salad, and a glass of cabernet. 

In recent months, media reports on new research being conducted at the University of Missouri-Columbia have indicated that that glass of cabernet may effectively kill bacterial pathogens that have found their way into my meal, making it safer.  Just this weekend WTAE TV in Pittsburgh reported on the results of this research: 

The neat thing about the study is that it doesn’t seem to matter about the price. It’s all in the color of the wine: red.

Researchers said cabernet, pinot noir and merlot have the right stuff to protect against Salmonella typhimurium, H.pylori and the potentially fatal Listeria monocytogenes and E. coli.

After reading this report, one might conclude that eating raw cookie dough is OK as long as it’s followed by a glass of red wine.  But what do the researchers really have to say? 

Azlin Mustapha and Atreyee Das were interviewed by Abraham Mahshie for an article in the Columbia Tribune.  In the interview, Das said, “Sixty percent [concentration] wine is enough to kill bacteria,” but that concentration was reached in a controlled environment in a test tube in a lab – not in the human gut, which is where consumers might seek practical application of this new knowledge.

Lead researcher Mustapha told the Tribune, “I would not recommend that people go out and consume wine in excess.”  But how does this research really apply to the average person’s wine consumption?  Early reporting on the findings may give us false hope that one, two, even three glasses of red wine with dinner might make eating a rare hamburger safe.

Mustapha and Das anticipate two to three years of additional research on the subject.  When their study is published, maybe they’ll be able to tell me how much cabernet I have to drink to kill the pathogens on my steak, asparagus, and mashed potatoes.  Until then, I’ll rely on the system, from farm to fork, to keep the pathogens off my plate to begin with.

Suzanne Schreck is the communications director of Marler Clark.  Since joining Marler Clark in 2002, Ms. Schreck has managed the firm’s media relations and on-line presence, including the firm’s websites and blogs.