I’ve done some exhaustive research on the
matter, and I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done
other than to face the awful truth with a steely
resolve.
There is absolutely nothing we can eat.
Oh, there would seem to be plenty of food
around. The trouble is, whatever you’re thinking
of eating is going to kill you.
The front page of the Oct. 4 Sunday New York
Times had a frighteningly chilling story about
all the cruddy stuff that goes into a hamburger.
Upton Sinclair’s meatpacking industry
exposé novel, “The Jungle,” became a best-seller
in 1906 because, he said, “the public did not
want to eat tubercular beef.”
Well, old Upton had nothing on Michael Moss,
the lad who wrote that New York Times story.
While there is no disputing that Moss’ work is
a wonderful piece of investigative journalism, I
haven’t been able to look a burger in the face
since I read it.
I mean, odds are I’ll be among the millions of
folks who won’t happen to die or be paralyzed
from contact with an E. coli pathogen.
But now that I know what may have been in
those “Dollar Menu” double hamburgers I had
at McDonald’s the day before I read the story,
I’m feeling a little queasy.
The federal inspections
that started after Sinclair’s
novel can’t begin to enforce
rules intended to keep a
certain amount of fat _ and
cow feces _ out of your Whopper,
Big Mac or Wendy’s burgers.
I mean, the more you know,
the more disgusting it becomes.
So, I became determined to
do what Mom used to tell me,
and eat leafy green vegetables,
particularly lettuce and
spinach.
And here I thought that
sweet old lady loved me.
That was until I read a
CNNMoney.com story that cited
a study by a nutrition advocacy group stating
that leafy greens are the riskiest food you can
eat.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest’s
top 10 list of foods most likely to make you
sick has leafy greens at the top, followed by eggs,
tuna, oysters, potatoes, cheese, ice cream, tomatoes,
sprouts and berries.
All are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration,
but a fat lot of good that appears
to be doing.
According to FDA statistics, eating that seemingly
benign, “good-for-you” stuff can lead to
illnesses ranging from minor stomach aches to
death.
Death?
From a salad?
The study said the top cause of illness from
eating one was pathogens such as E. coli, Norovirus
and Salmonella in foods that were not
properly washed.
So, you just have to make sure you wash your
lettuce really, really well before you eat it,
right? I mean, nothing simpler, is there?
Well, except if you happen to be in a restaurant,
and you think you’re really being good
when you pass up the fettuccine Alfredo that
would most certainly clog up every artery in
your body.
“I’ll just have a salad,” you say as your dinner
companions nod in admiration of your willpower
and restraint even as they order the veal
parmigiana.
As you sit there trying to calculate the calories
you have just avoided, the daunting thought
hits you.
“Geez, I wonder if anyone back in the kitchen
has washed the lettuce? I could ask the waiter
to make sure someone did that, but then he’s going
to tell the chef, and he’s going to get insulted
and spit on my food.”
So you shut up, eat your salad and play E. coli
roulette.
“Millions of consumers are being made ill,
hundreds of thousands hospitalized and thousands
are dying each year from preventable
foodborne illnesses,” the study said. “Unfortunately,
the FDA is saddled with outdated laws,
and lacks the authority, tools and resources to
fight unsafe food.”
A guy named Robert Fuoss said something
that makes a lot of sense: “It would be nice if the
Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing
warnings about toxic substances and just gave
me the names of one or two things still safe to
eat.”
The way I see it, we all have a choice. We can
just refuse to eat anything, then waste away and
die a slow, agonizing death.
Or, we could follow the advice of Mark Twain,
who said, “Part of the secret of success in life is
to eat what you like and let the food fight it out
inside.”
Or playwright George Bernard Shaw,
who said: “Everything I eat has been proved
by some doctor or other to be a deadly poison,
and everything I don’t eat has been proved to
be indispensable for life. But I go marching
on.”
Shaw died in 1950, the year I was born. He
had marched on until he was 94 years old.
That’s good enough for me. I think I’ll do a
little marching on of my own and go get me a
quarter-pounder.
———
Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can
be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607)
432-1000, ext. 208.
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