So, you’re starting a diet, turning a page and vowing to eat healthy. Well, salad has always been the answer for people who want to maintain a balanced and healthy diet, right? So clearly the first thing you need to do is load up on all those great pre-packaged salads in the produce section and head for the salad bar, right? Or maybe not. New research coming out of the Julius Kühn Institute (JKI) is revealing that these types of fresh produce may be contaminated with bacteria, and that these may also include, gulp, bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.
“We have to get to the bottom of these findings,” said Professor Dr Georg Backhaus, President of the Julius Kühn Institute. Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria like the dreaded E. Coli are known to occur in manure, sewage sludge, soil and bodies of water, and these bacteria are naturally transferred to produce during the farming process. And part of the antibiotic-resistant problem is due to the fact that tetracycline antibiotics are used in livestock farming, causing development and propagation of these antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains. “This worrying detection of these kinds of bacteria on plants is in line with similar findings for other foods,” adds Professor Dr Dr Andreas Hensel, President of the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR). “We are now assessing as a matter of urgency what this finding means with regard to the health risk for consumers.”
Yikes. So, what do we do?
First, consumers should always wash raw vegetables, leaf salad and fresh herbs thoroughly with drinking water before eating them in order to minimize the risk of ingestion of pathogens or antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. Additionally, pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems like the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions should probably bypass eating pre-cut and packaged salads altogether, opting instead to prepare salads themselves using fresh and thoroughly washed ingredients shortly before consumption.
Okay, so just wash salads and vegetables, really, really, well and all will be well, yes? Well, if you’re a healthy person with a strong immune system, probably. But if you are an individual that has an immuno-compromised system, researchers say washing may not be enough “to reliably remove the disease pathogens or antimicrobial-resistant bacteria that may be present on vegetable foods.” They advise you should heat vegetables and fresh herbs “sufficiently,” for at least two minutes to 70°C inside the food, before consumption according to the instructions of their attending physicians. Which essentially means that if you want to be absolutely sure you’re not ingesting bacteria: cook your vegetables.
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