Tag Archives: Poop

A Canadian in New Zealand: Cartwheeling in sheep poo

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This weekend during a mini-adventure an hour north I got to tick two things off my Things to do in New Zealand list: drive on the left side of the road and pet a lamb. While the former turned out to be easier than initially presumed (aside from roundabouts), it was the latter that had me giddy.

Hills covered in sheep were everywhere and I couldn’t resist the temptation to hop a fence (despite the electrical shock endured) and cartwheel the fields (right), scaring sheep and likely placing my hands in sheep poo. I didn’t wash them, though I really should have.

Sheep, like cows and goats, are ruminant mammals and therefore can carry E. coli O157:H7. If you cartwheel in [sheep] doo doo, wash your hands.

Plans and guidelines don’t make food safe. People do

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That’s what I told the Topeka Capital-Journal last week in a story published today.

Mike Heideman, KDHE spokesman, said the most common food-borne illnesses in Kansas are salmonella and E.coli, both transmitted by eating food contaminated with human or animal feces.

Don’t eat poop.
 

Doo doo in the Soo

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Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario is a very unique place. Lovingly called the Soo, home of the Bon Soo winter carnival and Greyhounds Ontario Hockey League team, many, including myself, call it home.

Today, while creeping on a fellow Saultite’s Facebook photos, I came across this picture (right). My workmate asked if cartwheeling was Canadian slang for something – I’m pretty sure it refers to the gymnastics move.

If you cartwheel in doo doo, wash your hands.
 

Cooking with Pooh

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Last night while Doug was cooking dinner and we were feeding Sorenne some rice cereal and squash, I noticed we still had a tube of Pillsbury Cookie Dough in the refrigerator leftover from last week’s cookie experiment. We decided to make some cookies and free up more space in the fridge.

Doug reminded me, as I got ready for the extremely complicated process of slicing the dough to put on a cookie sheet, that I needed to treat the product as though it were contaminated. I said, “But this isn’t the recalled dough.” To which Doug responded, “Just because it wasn’t recalled doesn’t mean that it isn’t contaminated.” True that. So we were careful not to cross-contaminate. We put the tube on a cutting board. I used a pair of scissors to open it up and immediately put them in the dishwasher. I sliced up the dough, put it on the cookie sheet, washed my hands thoroughly, and Doug took care of the actual baking.

The cookies were not nearly as delicious as the ones Katie and I used to make during her 5 month stay in Manhattan, and I’m sure they contained some dairy, but we ate all of the cookies anyway.

This week Tom sent us a book advertisement from Amazon.com, “Cooking with Pooh: Yummy Yummy Cookie Cutter Treats.” If you’re potentially cooking with poo, be careful not to cross-contaminate and do not eat uncooked dough.


 

No Reservations’ Catherine Zeta-Jones gives good garnish; does she wash her hands?

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Catherine Zeta-Jones gives good garnish.

After working undercover for a week at a posh Manhattan restaurant in preparation for an upcoming role, the owner told People magazine that Zeta-Jones was, "a great garnisher. Drizzling oil and balsamic on plates – she does a nice job."

I wrote that two years ago, but now that the movie, No Reservations, is in heavy rotation on the movie channels (always on in the background) I can finish the story.

Two years ago I had my own Manhattan garnish moment — Manhattan, Kansas.

Amy took me to one of those food porn places, where the presentation of the food is sometimes more important than the basics; the kind of place populated by the Matt Dillon character from Saturday Night Live who wrote a book, How to Order Sushi Like a CEO.

The bathrooms in the place accommodate only one person, so I was left standing outside the door. I heard the toilet flush and the door open; out walked the chef; no handwashing.

Amy spent the rest of the night watching the chef, to see what he would touch next. We haven’t been back.

A little more food safety, a little less food porn.

A cookbook of recipes to move the poop: The Un-Constipated Gourmet

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Baby Sorenne is coming up on seven months, and her poop is changing. As more solids are introduced into her diet, her poop has gone from runny brown to sticky to fully formed turds.

Yesterday, she started screaming as loud as she could for about 20 seconds. Sure enough, out popped a poop. That was about the fourth consecutive time it’s happened. Really, who hasn’t wanted to scream during a plugged up poop.

If you’re one of those people, Eat Me Daily reports today on The Un-Constipated Gourmet: Secrets for a Movable Feast, a collection of recipes designed to make you poop by first-time author Danielle Svetcov.

Svetcov’s hope is that the book — which promises recipes you can serve to your "uncorked" friends without them realizing that they’re specially engineered for your own digestive needs — will deliver "superfoods with an agenda" so that the "potty-challenged" and those with "bathroom envy" will find themselves "called to duty."
 

Possible poop remnants and Nestle’s raw cookie dough

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During the evening of Thursday, June 18, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment urged Coloradans not to eat raw Nestle Toll House cookie dough because of possible contamination with E. coli O157:H7.

The next morning, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned consumers not to eat any varieties of prepackaged Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough due to the risk of contamination with E. coli O157:H7. At the same time, Nestlé announced a voluntary recall of all Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products, “out of an abundance of caution.”

My colleague Evan managed to get some of that recalled cookie dough, I got some other cookie dough, and we made cookies.

In the latest video from the Safe Food Café, I stress that cookie dough is a raw product (although the eggs have been pasteurized in any commercial product) and can therefore cross-contaminate anything in the kitchen, and that the warning labels and safe-handling instructions on packages of raw cookie dough are terrible.
 

Antenna in your mocha latte?

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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) maintains a list of Food Action Defect Levels in the Code of Federal Regulations "to establish maximum levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods for human use that present no health hazard."

A local news station in Michigan got hold of this list and started asking people on the street how they felt about the number of bug parts allowed in their coffee and the amount of rodent "excreta" tolerated in their chocolate.

My local news station in Wichita, Kansas, broadcast their story Tuesday while I shook my head and chuckled. There were a lot of interesting faces as people looked from their cup to the list and back again.

In the end, I got the impression that the public is okay with a few bug parts (and laugh about getting the extra protein), but won’t stand for the poop.

We here at barfblog.com continually advocate keeping as much poop out of food as possible, and proudly wear our t-shirts that declare, "don’t eat poop" with a message about handwashing on the back.

But I’m not crazy. I realize, like the FDA (not the USDA, as asserted in the story, which primarily regulates only meat and poultry products), that it’s virtually impossible to keep the entire (non-meat and -poultry) food supply 100% poop-free. Therefore, I’m glad there are regulations in place to reduce the microbial risks associated with that poop. (The poop that got into the peanuts at the Peanut Corp. of America plant violated those regs.)

I’m just saying… some poop happens. Risks that cannot be eliminated can, and should, be controlled. Responsible, informed producers and consumers do this every day with tools like the FDA Defect Action Level Handbook and tip-sensitive digital meat thermometers.

Do your part: wash your hands and stick it in.

New study says keep poopy kids out of pools — swim diapers not best solution

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It was about 105 F when Amy and Sorenne and I touched down in Phoenix yesterday afternoon, to visit family and do some work. Pools – and air conditioning – become increasingly popular in Phoenix and elsewhere as the temperatures climb.

So that means the annual increase of cryptosporidium and other bugs related to exposure in swimming pools. Debate has raged over the past couple of years in various communities: what’s the best way to keep poop out of pools, especially with kids in diapers (I have one of those).

The U.S. National Swimming Pool Foundation marked the emergence of summer by sending out a press release today about some research presented in March by researchers from University of North Carolina-Charlotte that found swim diapers help slow the release of disease-causing germs, but the benefits are short lived.

The researchers measured the amount of microspheres that released from swim diapers worn by children. The microspheres have a similar size (five microns) to that of Crypto. Normal swim trunks, common disposable diapers and reusable diapers with and without vinyl diaper covers were tested. Swimming trunks without a swim diaper of any kind had the poorest performance – almost 90% of the microspheres were released into the water within one minute.

Swim diapers released about 50% of the microspheres within one minute. A vinyl diaper cover placed over a disposable swim diaper slightly improved performance. Still, over 25% were released into the water within two minutes.

"When a fecal accident contains about a billion disease-causing Crypto oocysts, hundreds of millions of oocysts get into the water within minutes," explains Dr. James Amburgey, the lead scientist in the study. "Swimmers only need to ingest about ten Crypto oocysts to become infected."

"This study confirms that parental restraint is the key to preventing Crypto outbreaks – not swim diapers. Swimming with diarrhea is irresponsible because it places other people’s health at risk," reinforces Thomas M. Lachocki, Ph.D., CEO of the National Swimming Pool Foundation(R) (NSPF(R)) who funded the research.
 

Don’t eat poop cupcakes and more

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Things are winding down at Kansas State University for the year – at least on the teaching side. In the past, Amy and I have planned some exotic trip to France or Canada to get out of Kansas for the summer, but this year, we’re staying fairly put, with baby Sorenne. Maybe she’ll get acclimated to the heat.

On Friday, for the second year now, Amy hosted the Modern Languages departmental end-of-semester soiree, where all the language professors get together in a Tower of Babel sorta thing. Good fun, good food. And in a food porn moment, Katie made language-based cupcakes. What’s your favorite?

(Oh, and the A-Goo cupcake was in honor of baby Sorenne, cause she says that a lot.)