The Case for Consuming One's Fruits Fermented

A week ago Sunday I indulged in a “healthy” snack of freshly cut strawberries and blueberries. The quotation marks in the last sentence would not be necessary had I been a little less lackadaisical about thoroughly washing them first. Some hours later began that special agony, which most (all?) of us experience more than once in life. (I don’t know for a fact it was the berries – I didn’t take them to a lab for testing – but the only other possibilities are unlikely, each for its own reason.) I’m normally known for an iron stomach. I have omnivorous habits, no known food allergies, and a taste for the spiciest spices. But I met my match in berries.
 
In the past I’ve shrugged off the occasional food poisoning episode quickly. Not this time. Either this was a sterner bug, or I’m less resilient these days on account of age, or both. In the past, digestive system turmoil (the details and consequences of which I’ll politely decline to describe) was the whole of it, and it was over in 24 hours or so. This time it was almost the least of it. Instead, Chills and Fever opened the show. Intestinal Distress (accompanied by backup singers Torpor and Sleepiness) soon joined the act and occupied Center Stage for the next five days. Even now, though I feel OK finally, I still feel the need to be uncharacteristically gentle and cautious with my food choices lest I risk an encore.
 
Prior to the 19^th century, food poisoning was understood only in the chemical sense, e.g. a dash of arsenic mixed in the mashed potatoes from an impatient heir. An understanding of the biological type had to await the confirmation of the germ theory of disease. The first microbe to be identified as a specific culprit behind a specific illness of this type was Salmonella. In 1885 some very good early medical investigative work not only identified the bug responsible for an outbreak of food poisoning in Britain but traced it to a specific slaughtered sick cow. The list of known harmful food-borne biological contaminants (bacterial and viral) since then has grown very long indeed: Campylobacter, Listeria monocytogenes, Escherichia coli, Hepatitis A, etc. They all wreaked havoc long before people knew they existed, of course. According to two medical historians at the University of Maryland, Alexander the Great died in 323 BCE most probably from typhoid fever, which is caused by Salmonella typhi: it was something he ate.

Salmonella

No matter how proactive a country’s health system may be, individual cases and wider outbreaks will happen. Germ contamination, picked up from the soil, are just a feature of fresh produce, whether home grown or from the market. Any fresh raw poultry probably does carry Salmonella or Campylobacter, though proper cooking kills it. Hence the advice always to clean and cook food well. The CDC publishes a list of Foods That Can Cause Food Poisoning. Not many foods are absent from it.
 
Some 48 million Americans get food poisoning every year. This is an estimate, of course, since most of those afflicted don’t seek medical help. 128,000 are hospitalized, however, and 3000 die. So, if last week was an average one, 923,000 Americans were sharing my unpleasant experience. 2519 had a far worse time of it. I’ll be taking precautions to avoid rejoining those statistics again any time soon. I know it’s entirely the wrong lesson, but the canned fruit and vegetable aisle at the market is looking more attractive to me at the moment than the fresh produce aisle… at least until the next time one of those canned labels gets recalled. Maybe the wine aisle is best of all.

 

Samantha Fish – Chills and Fever