This time, tomatoes: How do you react to the seemingly annual food scares?
It wasn’t that long ago when we were expected to run for our lives from raw spinach. Or from scallions.
Now it’s tomatoes.
Let’s put aside for a moment that tomatoes aren’t even in season, and we’ve become accustomed for a generation to getting any vegetable or fruit at any time of year — whether or not Mother Nature intends it. It is what it is…
…and now McDonalds, Schnucks, Dierbergs, Taco Bell and a host of other chains are yanking tomatoes off the shelves in response to this year’s salmonella scare. From today’s story:
The source of the tomatoes responsible for the illnesses in at least 16 states has not been pinpointed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said at least 23 people have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported.
The FDA is investigating the source of the outbreak, FDA spokeswoman Kimberly Rawlings said in an e-mail. The FDA said Saturday the outbreak was linked to certain varieties of raw tomatoes including red plum, red Roma and red round.
How seriously do you take these warnings? Given the confusion, do you simply avoid tomatoes altogether, or do you try and be selective about which you eat and which you avoid?
The Associated Press has a story out about how to take special care with raw vegetables — and notes that cooking vegetables to 145 degrees kills salmonella.
What will you do throughout the Tomato Scare of 2008?
Kurt is the director of social media for the Post-Dispatch, where he has worked since August 2002. He's been a journalist since 1982, covering municipal government, courts, education and two hurricanes as a reporter before becoming an editor. 
I’ll grow my own.
This one’s very confusion. You can do some Roma tomotoes–ones that are grown in certain states. How do we trust where they are coming from?
Do most folks know the difference between a Roma and a Beefsteak tomoto?
I agree with the poster above and have a few tomato plants. But, it will be a few weeks before anything is ripe.
I’ll keep searching for yellow tomatoes. The ones I grew last year were a disappointment.
I will have t ask the squirrels how mine were last year. If we could only have a mad cow scare, McDonald’s could leave the hamburger off, too. Isn’t ketchup made from tomatoes, they ought to get rid of that, too.
When every health article you read promotes the eating of fresh vegetables and fruit it doesn’t make it very appetizing to have one or the other pulled off the shelves every time you turn around. Lets see, the “bad” list now contains, cantelopes, lemons, tomatoes, spinach, onions, bag lettuce and whatever else I missed. So all things that are supposed to keep us healthy will kill us by toxicity. I think I will head on back to the boxed, powedered, fake stuff and take my chances.
My basic reaction can be summed up in one word: WHATEVER
Now, either our food growing/importation/storage/preparation practices are way out of whack, or we are hitting the panic button prematurely at increasingly frequent intervals. 23 people hospitalized in 16 states? That’s really pretty low odds, considering how many people eat tomatoes in 16 states. Do all these people really have the same thing? Did they all really get it from tomatoes? You could probably determine that the majority of AIDs patients had eaten hamburgers in the month prior to being diagnosed but that doesn’t make hamburgers suspect in causing AIDs. Now if 23 people who had eaten at the same restaurant ended up in the hospital after they had consumed the shrimp scampi, that’s pretty much a smoking gun. But this tomato thing seems like we’re really reaching for the disaster du jour.
After I initially heard about the tomatoe outbreak, I immediately went to the lab and resumed my research on development of the artificial tomatoe. It looks like a tomatoe, but I just can’t get it to taste like a tomatoe.
Thank you, Mr. Qualye
I mean Quayle
Pat Carpenter I couldn’t agree with you more. WHATEVER, SO WHAT, WAKE ME WHEN IT IS OVER.
My guess is that these types of things have happened for eons, and we didn’t have the science to trace it’s cause. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
I can remember my grandmother cleaning out her chicken coop and throwing the stuff directly on her garden, including directly on the unriped tomatoes, green beans etc. We all survived!!
I am surprised the human species has survived this long…