let us avoid lettuce

It's not just meat tainted with mad cow disease that you should avoid - it's veggies, too.

Lately, though, produce has caused a disturbing number of disease outbreaks; just since September, bacteria-tainted tomatoes, spinach and lettuce have made hundreds of people sick, and killed three. There have been 20 serious outbreaks in the past decade or so, and many have come from crops grown in California, not from imports. Fruit juices, alfalfa sprouts and almonds have also been involved — all of them supposedly health foods, like salad, the things we feel most virtuous about eating.

The known outbreaks are just the tip of the iceberg, health officials say; far more illness is never reported. Most people don’t call the health department about a few days of gut trouble. The government estimates that over all, food-borne microbes — not just the ones on produce — make 76 million people a year sick, put 325,000 in the hospital and kill 5,000.

In a modern country, a rise in disease caused by tainted food seems like a giant step backward in public health. But there hasn’t been much public outrage or even disgust at the notion of filth seeping into the food supply.

Fast Food Nation, with its revelation of the presence of fecal matter in meat used by many fast food restaurants, caused quite a stir a few years back. (I bought a copy, read it, then went out for a Big Mac.... Kidding, folks. I'm kidding. I read the book and waited, like, several days before I ate a Big Mac.) Now, we should be afraid of lettuce and onions also.

In a modern country, a rise in disease caused by tainted food seems like a giant step backward in public health. But there hasn’t been much public outrage or even disgust at the notion of filth seeping into the food supply.

Among the nastiest bacteria is E. coli 0157:H7, which makes a powerful toxin that can cause severe illness and sometimes even kidney failure. This is the germ found on spinach a few months ago, and more recently on iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants. It comes from cow feces and was first identified in 1982. Feeding the animals grain instead of hay seems to promote its growth.

The strain is harmless to cows, but in people it is so dangerous, according to the Food and Drug Administration, that swallowing as few as 10 organisms may be enough to cause an infection. About 73,000 people a year get sick from this type of bacteria, and 61 die, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.