Do you wash bagged lettuce?

[HappyMama]

Found this interesting from Webmd:

Bagged Salad and Bacteria: What YOU Can Do Healthy Recipe Doctor

Bagged Salad and Bacteria and What you can do


Pretty much the last thing you want on your salad greens is bacteria that tends to reside in human feces. Many people, including me, buy the pre-washed spinach and romaine lettuce in bags expecting them to be clean and bacteria-free.

Well, Consumer Reports pretty much blew this belief out of the water. According to their recent tests, 39 percent of packaged salad green samples exceeded the level for total coliforms considered acceptable and 23 percent exceeded this level for enterococcus bacteria…bacteria that Consumer Reports describes as “better indicators of fecal contamination.” Shocked and concerned? I know I am. The first question that pops into my mind is what type of feces are we talking about – animal or human (not that any type of fecal bacteria is more desirable than another)?

What did researchers look for?

* Total coliforms: Water is commonly tested for total coliforms to indicate the general quality of the water and the likelihood the water is fecally contaminated. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “Coliforms are a group of bacteria, most of which are harmless. At first glance, it might seem strange that a harmless group of bacteria such as coliforms could cause such commotion. But like police tape and chalk outlines, coliform bacteria are often found at the scene of a crime even though they are not themselves criminals.”

* Enterococcus: One of the bacteria they tested for is enterococcus. If this refers to enterococcus faecalis then we are talking about an extremely durable bacterium that normally lives in the gastro-intestinal tracts of humans. How durable are we talking about? It can survive 77 days on dirt. Food technologists from the Agricultural Research Service Produce Quality and Safety Laboratory discovered recently that bacteria can actually become hardier and more likely to survive exposure to stomach acid when the bacteria are sitting in air-starved containers/bags while in the presence of nutrients, which are coming from the cut leaves of lettuce.

What are the symptoms?
What types of symptoms can someone expect from bacteria contamination in their salad greens? It all depends on the bacteria. If it’s enterococcus faecalis, someone might experience fever, confusion, urinary tract infection with painful urination and blood in urine. The bacteria responsible for the food poisoning outbreak with raw spinach in previous years, E. coli, can cause severe stomach cramps and diarrhea, nausea and vomiting.

What can we do to decrease our risk of consuming high amounts of bacteria on salad greens (bagged or otherwise)?

* Buy bags of salads greens from the back of the shelf and as far from their use-by date as you can get your hands on. Consumer Reports found in their tests that the packages one to five days from their use-by date were more likely to have higher bacteria levels.

* In light of this new information about washed and packaged lettuce, particularly spinach, is it better to buy a head of lettuce? It seems like it might be better to buy it as a head since the bags, due to the low oxygen environment in the bag (which encourages the lettuce to stay fresh) seems to encourage bacteria growth if they are improperly stored (unrefrigerated for an extended period).

* Try to buy ready-to-eat salads and salad green from stores where they appear to be properly stored at cold temperatures and keep them at cold temperatures when you are storing them at home.

* Wash your greens yourself when you bring them home from the store, even the prewashed or triple-washed ones. Rinse them well in clean, running water and pat them dry or use a salad spinner to remove excess water. If you aren’t using them immediately, you can put the salad greens in a clean bag, not the same bag you bought them in. The longer the greens sit in the bags and the closer to their use-by date, the more chance the bacteria has to multiply.

Here is the consumer report:

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In this report
Overview
Bagged salad

Bagged salad: How clean?
Last reviewed: March 2010
March 2010 This article appeared in

How Clean is Bagged Salad?


Bowl of salad

" and "triple-washed" salad greens sold in plastic clamshells or bags are squeaky clean. But our recent tests found room for improvement.

No, we didn't find pathogens such as
E. coli O157:H7, listeria, or salmonella. With our small sample size—208 containers representing 16 brands purchased at stores in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York—we didn't expect to. (The Department of Agriculture, in a test of more than 4,000 samples of loose and packaged salad in 2008, found salmonella in two of them. All of our tests included packaged greens.)

But in our samples, all of which were within their use-by date, we did find bacteria that are common indicators of poor sanitation and fecal contamination—in some cases, at rather high levels.

We tested for total coliforms and for other bacteria, including enterococcus, that are better indicators of fecal contamination. Federal action limits exist for indicator organisms in water, raw meat, milk, and some processed foods, but not produce. Those organisms are typically used to gauge possible pathogen contamination.

Several industry experts we consulted suggested that for leafy greens, an unacceptable level of total coliforms or enterococcus is 10,000 or more colony forming units per gram (CFU/g) or a comparable estimate. In our tests, 39 percent of samples exceeded that level for total coliforms and 23 percent for enterococcus.

Results varied widely among samples, even within the same brand, from undetectable levels of those bacteria to more than 1 million CFU/g. Packages with higher bacteria levels had similarities. Many contained spinach and were one to five days from their use-by date. Packages six to eight days from their use-by date fared better. Whether the greens came in a clamshell or bag, included "baby" greens, or were organic made no difference.

Brands for which we had more than four samples, including national brands Dole, Earthbound Farm Organic, and Fresh Express, plus regional and store brands, had at least one package with relatively high levels of total coliforms or enterococcus. Our tests were conducted at an outside lab over two weeks in August and September with financial support from the Pew Health Group, which is working to improve food safety.

Consumers Union supports Senate Bill 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, that would, among other things, require the Food and Drug Administration to set stronger produce safety standards. Those should include performance standards for indicators of fecal contamination, such as generic E. coli and enterococcus.

[HappyMama]

Sorry and for your reading pleasure....lol hehe:

Calif. Company Recalls Bagged Salad Blends CBS Denver

(credit: AP)
Filed under
Health, Local, News
Related tags
Bagged Lettuce, Recall, Salinas, Taylor Farms Inc.

SALINAS, Calif. (AP) – Taylor Farms Retail Inc. is voluntarily recalling 3,265 cases of various bagged salad blends that have the potential to be contaminated with salmonella.

The Salinas, Calif., company said Wednesday that its action comes after the Washington state Agriculture Department conducted a random test on a finished package of spinach.

No illnesses have been reported.

The bagged salad products include those with “best by” dates ranging from Oct. 18 to 21

[HappyMama]

I don't wash bagged salad mixes, though I rarely buy them and even then, only for the fiancee, as I'm allergic to lettuce.

However, this Consumer Reports article recommends washing them. Bagged salad: how clean are packaged salads?

Sorry Janal didn't see you put this as well. Blessings and hugs hon! Thanks for putting the article. Cool question by the way.

[nuisance26]

~No, I don't wash it. It's not dirty or buggy and I agree that washing will do noting to deter bacteria. In fact, you may introduce bacteria due to cross contamination when you take it to the sink to wash it.
Reminds me of how they used to recommend that you wash uncooked meat before preparing. That was found to be more dangerous as it spread bacteria on the meat to other common surfaces.~

[dcompton]

I don't buy it often. When I do, I never wash it, but then, I'm more casual about most of these things than a lot of you are. The world is not germ free - anywhere or in any part - and anyway, we were never promised that life would be 100% safe. I'm still alive and pretty healthy at 63, so I guess it's worked so far. There may be bacteria in it, but there's bacteria in everything. It's why we evolved immune systems. Considering how many bags of salad are eaten, and how few people we hear of becoming really seriously sick from it, it seems an acceptable level of risk to me. I'm just not willing to go through life distrusting and second guessing everything.

[HappyMama]

I grow my own on lettuce tables all the way through November, small greenhouse and sprout inside. What I don't grow I buy organic at the Co-op and make my own, is cheaper for me and I control who washes their hands....lol

[FrugalKate]

With all the stories in the news about "ecoli", "listeria" etc lately I wash ALL produce bagged or unbagged. I just don't trust the manufactures to wash them before they dump it mechanically it in bags.

[annymoll]

We grow alot of our own, but when I buy it I wash it.Bagged or loose.