Tag Archives: meal ready-to-eat

Listeria in the news again

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Food company Ready to Eat has announced a Listeria outbreak in several of their pre-packaged meals.
Ready to Eat, which produces ‘Muscle Fuel’ pre-made meals, said the meals affected are the ‘Vegetarian Chickpea and Pumpkin Rosti on Spinach Salad’ and the ‘Turkish Style Chicken & Rice’ with best before dates of August 4th, August 5th, August 6th, 2017.
Other meals are unaffected, the company says.
Any customers in possession of one of the affected meals are being urged to discard it immediately.
In a statement, Ready to Eat CEO Hamish Coulter said they were horrified when they received the news.
“To learn that one of our trusted produce suppliers has let us down is extremely disappointing.”
The Hamilton-based company was informed on Friday afternoon that its supplier Vegeez had returned a positive result for Listeria in one of its recent batches of cabbage.
On Friday evening the company contacted the 139 customers affected.
Vegeez general manager Glen Reid said it had taken full responsibility for the “very rare” event.
Mr Reid said in total there were 15 companies supplied with the affected cabbage, but all other companies managed to dump the product before using it.
Mr Coulter apologised to the company’s customers and said they were putting in measures to ensure this did not happen again.
The company has discontinued the use of coleslaw for the foreseeable future.
If any customer has consumed what they believe to be a contaminated meal they are advised to seek medical advice.
All customers will be contacted again this week with refunds issued.

I stumbled across an interested paper published in the Journal of Food Protection in February 2017 investigating the fate of Listeria monocytogenes , pathogenic Yersinia enterocolitica , and Escherichia coli O157:H7 gfp+inoculated in low numbers into ready-to-eat baby spinach and mixed-ingredient salad (baby spinach with chicken meat).

A quick synopsis of the study showed that when mixed-ingredient salad was stored at 8°C during shelf life, only L. monocytogenes increased significantly, reaching 3.0 log CFU/g within 3 days. The 8°C reflects maximum refrigerator temperature storage in Sweden.

In plain baby spinach, only pathogenic Y. enterocolitica populations increased significantly during storage for 7 days, and this was exclusively at an abuse temperature (15°C). Thus, mixing ready-to-eat leafy vegetables with chicken meat strongly influenced levels of inoculated strains during storage. 

The authors then translated the numbers into risks of infection. The risk of listeriosis (measured as probability of infection) was 16 times higher when consuming a mixed-ingredient salad stored at 8°C at the end of shelf life, or 200,000 times higher when stored at 15°C, compared with when consuming it on the day of inoculation. They conclude that efforts should focus on preventing temperature abuse during storage to mitigate the risk of listeriosis.

Söderqvist K1, Lambertz ST1,2, Vågsholm I1, Fernström LL1, Alsanius B3, Mogren L3, Boqvist S1. Fate of Listeria monocytogenes , Pathogenic Yersinia enterocolitica , and Escherichia coli O157:H7 gfp+ in Ready-to-Eat Salad during Cold Storage: What Is the Risk to Consumers? J Food Prot. 2017 Feb;80(2):204-212. doi: 10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-16-308.

MRE: tastes great, less filling, lasts forever

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In honor of Chuck Dodd successfully defending his PhD yesterday at Kansas State University, I decided to crack open the military Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) he’d given to me a couple of years ago.

In June 2008, The Christian Science Monitor reported about Jeanette Kennedy, a food technologist at the US Army Natick Soldier Systems Center (NSSC) west of Boston. Kennedy faces creative challenges unlike those before any other chef because she creates MREs, designed to fuel soldiers lugging 100-pound packs all day.

The story says that meals can’t just taste good; they’ve got to last … for three years stored at 80 degrees F., be capable of withstanding chemical or biological attacks, and survive a 10-story free fall (when packed in a crate of 12).

MREs were first served in the 1980s when canned fare gave way to meals packed in sturdy beige pouches. Others have called them Meals Rejected by the Enemy, Meals Rarely Edible, and Meals Refusing to Exit (a name that continues to stick despite the addition of more fiber).

Troop acceptance of the meals, which cost the military $7.13 each, has taken center stage. Back in 1982 when MREs debuted, designers assumed they could hang up their aprons. But when the first Gulf War broke out, the new ration moved from limited training use to the only food soldiers ate for months on end. Angry letters flooded in from the trenches, and the military realized that rations had to be a work in progress.

Now food technologists conduct focus groups with troops across the country, follow restaurant fads, and even attend culinary school to make sure their approach isn’t entirely scientific.

The MRE I had contained noodles in butter-flavored sauce, cheese spread, breaded chicken patty in curry-flavored sauce, toaster pastry, crackers, cappuccino, condiments, and of course, M&Ms. The activated heater pouch to warm food and coffee MREs was particularly innovative. The food? I wouldn’t want to live on it.

In 2008, chef Kennedy said, "[MREs] really go along with the trends. As new things come out at restaurants, new flavors like chipotle or buffalo [get popular], they get incorporated into the MRE…. The trend [now is] going to more comfort foods like Salisbury steak, beef briquette, but it’s not just macaroni and cheese, it’s Mexican macaroni and cheese."