Whole Foods Market has terrible food safety advice, blames consumers for getting sick, sells raw milk in some stores, offers up fairytales about organic and natural foods, and their own CEO says they sell a bunch of junk.
Carrie Brownstein writes on the Whole Foods blog site today that the Whole Foods Market Responsibly Farmed logo means that the product meets our strict Whole Foods Market Quality Standards for Aquaculture. The logo also means that the product has been third-party verified to ensure our standards are being met.
Doing my best Seinfeld, where can I buy the Irresponsibly Farmed seafood? And what’s up with third-party audits? Peanut Corporation of America was audited by third parties. If Whole Foods customers are that gillable/gullible to pay a premium, then sure. I’ll stick with farmed fish. The regular kind.
In Room 519 of Kindred Hospital, Linda Rivera can no longer speak.
Her mute state, punctuated only by groans, is the latest downturn in the swift collapse of her health that began in May when she curled up on her living room couch and nonchalantly ate several spoonfuls of the Nestlé cookie dough her family had been consuming for years. Federal health officials believe she is among 80 people in 31 states sickened by cookie dough contaminated with a deadly bacteria, E. coli O157:H7.
The impact of the infection has been especially severe for Rivera and nine other victims who developed a life-threatening complication known as hemolytic uremic syndrome. One, a 4-year-old girl from South Carolina, had a stroke and is partially paralyzed.
In a baffling waste of resources, groups like the International Food Information Council, have decided that food safety education month – that apparently starts today – is all about educating consumers with sanitized messages; that if consumers were only made aware they had a role to play in food safety, outbreaks related to contaminated peanut butter, produce and cookie dough would be reduced.
Whenever a group says the public needs to be educated – in this case about food safety — that group has utterly failed to present a compelling case for their cause. ??????I cringe, and remember a Lewis Lapham column I read in Harper’s magazine in the mid-1980s about how individuals can choose to educate themselves about all sorts of interesting things, but the idea of educating someone is doomed to failure. Oh, and it’s sorta arrogant to state that others need to be educated; to imply that if only you understood the world as I understand the world, we would agree and dissent would be minimized.???
An honest Food Safety Education month would include food safety stories, tragic or otherwise, and a rigorous evaluation of what has worked, what hasn’t worked and what can be improved, rather than a checklist of ineffective and often inaccurate food safety instructions with the cumulative effect of blaming consumers. Telling people to wash their hands isn’t keeping the piss out of meals.
Foodborne illness outbreaks have been a regular feature in the news lately and are top of mind when consumers think of food and health issues, but new International Food Information Council Foundation research shows that fewer people are taking basic precautions that could significantly reduce their risk of becoming sick.
Are consumers supposed to cook their peanut butter? Extra roast those pistachios? Sauté the leafy greens and cook the tomatoes?
The survey results are based on self-reported behaviors – do you wash your hands, yes I wash my hands, but not really – so should be immediately consigned to the garbage-in-garbage-out bin.
My favorite question of late is to ask audiences of VP food safety types and other titans of industry how many of them use a digital, tip-sensitive thermometer when they grill chicken breast or burgers for their friends and family, since they are quality control types and really care about data.
Guess it’s follow what I preach, not what I practice.
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Whole Foods Market has terrible food safety advice, blames consumers for getting sick, sells raw milk in some stores, offers up fairytales about organic and natural foods, and their own CEO says they sell a bunch of junk.
As The Washington Post reports this morning.jpg)
Foodborne illness outbreaks have been a regular feature in the news lately and are top of mind when consumers think of food and health issues, but new International Food Information Council Foundation research shows that fewer people are taking basic precautions that could significantly reduce their risk of becoming sick..jpg)