Halt your eating!

People, I have news: It might not be safe to eat anymore.

Surely by now you've heard of the listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupes grown at Jensen Farms in Colorado? It's one of the most deadly food-related outbreaks of all time (read: in the history of keeping such statistics), with somewhere from 13 to 16 people (depending on where you get your numbers) already dead and many more sickened. Although listeria is not commonly found in fruit (but rather animal products like meat and cheese), it is a rather scary pathogen because it doesn't slow its growth in low temperatures--meaning that if you put a tainted product in your refrigerator, the bacteria just keep reproducing. Listeria is also scary because once in your body, it is "aggressive in escaping the gastrointestinal tract" and can rapidly spread to places you really don't want it to go--like your spinal cord. (Typing that, I am reminded of this gem, which is completely unrelated except in its spinal reference and in its reference to deli meats, which are commonly contaminated with listeria.)

So far, the burden of death from listeria infections has primarily been borne by an elderly population, prompting a rather hilarious (to me) comment in the New York Times from some Seattle lawyer who "represents victims of food-borne illness" (what a happy job, btw):

This outbreak [of listeria linked to cantaloupes] might turn out to be especially deadly simply because cantaloupe is a food eaten by many older people.

"Sometimes in outbreaks, it’s the population that’s consuming the food that drives the numbers...In this instance, you’ve got a lot of people 60 and older who are consuming cantaloupe."

Read: Old people love cantaloupe. Really? I thought it was a favorite among people of all ages...or maybe I'm just old at heart, because I love the stuff.

Anywho, it's scary enough that cantaloupes are contaminated and that people are dying simply because they wanted to include some fresh fruit in their diet....but what's even more terrifying is what comes to light after some innocent googling for "listeria cantaloupes." For instance, this morning I learned almost by happenstance about the following pathogens lurking in foods that could be in your house right now (she says ominously):

• Organic grape tomatoes contaminated with salmonella (September 28, 2011) (more info here)
• Ground turkey contaminated with salmonella (September 11, 2011)
• Ground beef contaminated with E. coli (Sep 27, 2011) (more info here)
• And if you're reading this from Canada, beware of your ham - it could be contaminated with listeria!

Those are just a few of the stories I stumbled upon as I was "researching" the cantaloupe-listeria thing. I could probably find many more if I tried (the FDA keeps a running list!), but I think I'm plenty terrified already. I don't want to eat anything, ever again. Hence my blanket statement declaring it unsafe to eat.

(Brief aside: here's the best recall I've read about this morning: Pepperidge Farm has recalled a batch of their Baked Naturals Sesame Sticks because of the "possible presence of small, thin pieces of wire" in the sticks. Apparently "a small number of consumers have reported minor scrapes in and around the mouth." What...the...how does that even happen?)

Food pathogens are probably the number one reason why I'm so mistrustful of the industrial food system in this country (although now I'm worried about wires in my crackers as well!). Perhaps it is time to set in motion the plan that a friend and I concocted a few years ago for an organic farm off the grid in Montana. We haven't yet resolved our issues about whether or not we will eat the animals we tend on the farm (I say yes, she says no), but we could definitely get started with the veggies. No listeria for us!

Picasa's online photo editor is suuuper fun to play with.

Contagion = This blog times a million

Perhaps ill-advisedly, I saw Contagion over the weekend and omg I never want to touch anyone or anything ever again. I spent most of the movie curled in a fetal position, stressing out, and I walked out of the theater with a very strong desire to build a virus-proof underground shelter stocked with food, water, firearms, ammunition, and a BSL-4 grade biohazard suit. It's been a few days and I still have that urge, so perhaps I will spend my 30th birthday weekend (coming up too damn soon) preparing for the next global pandemic. Orrrrr....i'll spend it drinking wine. Only time will tell.

A professor at Columbia, who consulted on Contagion (and actually invented the film's (unnamed) disease (drawing from an real life bat-->pig-->human disease jumping example)) recently wrote an interesting op-ed piece about the film in the NYT that's worth a read. It describes the reality behind the film's fiction, which I think is important to consider, because it's far too easy to dismiss a fictional star-studded film as hyperbole when it's too hard or scary to face the real truths it brings to light.

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Unrelated except in its apocalypse reference: Netflix would like to apologize for the inadvertent apocalypse.

Friday Fatigue

Man. It's hard to have a full time job, move across town/the country, write a dissertation, try to have a semblance of a social life,* AND keep up with this blog.

I've been bookmarking things to write about here, but let's be honest: I won't get around to most of it. So here's a list of things I've found interesting recently.

1. WATCH YOUR HEAD! I was informed yesterday that there's a satellite falling to earth that is going to clear orbit today, and that there's a 1 in 3200 chance it could hit a person (a statistic I have verified in an extremely detailed NASA PowerPoint). While this doesn't precisely translate into a 1 in 3200 chance that it could hit ME, I'm not taking any chances. I think I'll work from the subway today. They have wifi down there, don't they?

(Side note: In my brief research on this satellite-maybe-hitting-me business, I discovered that NASA has an entire office dedicated to studying things that fall from space and might hit me. They think of everything!)

2. The world's (allegedly) deadliest volcano might erupt soon. Not a good time to plan a trip to Indonesia, I guess.

3. Ever wonder how breakfast cereal is made? Wonder no more! (Also, eat cereal no more...ick.)

4. Speaking of icky industrial food, the first two parts of this piece have rather disturbed me. Wood pulp in our food, and tasteless OJ? Guess I'll be fresh-squeezing my juice from now on, and trying to avoid chemically-treated pulverized wood.

More on food-grade wood pulp here and here. (Worth reading about, in my opinion.)

5. More tax, more happy?

6. And finally, some fun. Researchers have analyzed male dance moves to discover what the ladies like the most. The results might surprise you, so I'll quote directly from the abstract [try here for the full article]: "Three movement measures were key predictors of dance quality; these were variability and amplitude of movements of the neck and trunk, and speed of movements of the right knee."

More specifically, the following aspects of dudes' dancing seems to account for most of the variability in ladies' ratings: neck internal/external rotation (head shaking), trunk abduction/adduction (sideways bending), and right knee internal/external rotation (twisting).

Not to be a hater, but there is literally no attractive dance I can imagine that involves shaking one's head while bending sideways and twisting the right knee rapidly. But what do I know.

Do you guys remember this guy? Check out that trunk abduction/adduction!

Happy Friday.


*I am blatantly failing at my goal of making no new friends until the dissertation is done. Shame on me.

Seriously, this stuff is much more compelling than DARE ever was...

First I find out that cocaine can melt your face off, and now I learn that heavy use of marijuana can increase your chances of getting schizophrenia, especially if you use it during adolescence. What! Maybe drugs actually are bad for you!

A recent piece in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews has reviewed the scientific literature linking cannabis use and adult-onset psychosis/schizophrenia. Distressingly, the piece convincingly argues--using a number of different streams of research (particularly epidemiological (prospective and retrospective) and animal research)--that use of marijuana, at any point in life but particularly during adolescence, is linked (potentially causally?) to "schizophrenia outcomes." Indeed, pretty much all of the reviewed research on the topic that used human subjects, both from Western and non-Western populations, has shown that smoking the giggle weed is associated with a two- to three-fold increase in the risk of developing schizophrenia. The amount/extent of use is a factor as well--in one study of Swedish army conscripts, those who were heavy ganja users at the time of conscription were more than SIX TIMES as likely as non-users to receive a diagnosis of schizophrenia during the 27-year study period.

During adolescence, it is thought that cannabis use interferes with the development of neuronal networks, causing permanent brain changes that raise the likelihood of developing paranoia and schizophrenia. Studies in rats have shown that immature rats are more sensitive to the cognitive effects of cannabis, and that the "detrimental effects of acute cannabinoids on behavior are greater during puberty compared to adulthood." In an imaging study of human adolescents who had "long-term use of cannabis" (side note: how long could that term possibly be?), it was found that cannabis use "was associated with gyrification abnormalities in the cortex, suggesting that early cannabis use affected normal neurodevelopment." That does not sound good.

At this point I should probably pause to point out the obvious fact that smoking the jive stick won't necessarily give you schizophrenia--there are many other factors at play as well. To quote the article I read, "cannabis use is clearly not an essential or sufficient risk factor [for psychotic illness] as not all schizophrenic patients have used cannabis and the majority of cannabis users do not develop schizophrenia." Nevertheless, there is "a developmental link between cannabis and increased vulnerability to behavioral and cognitive impairments."

So here's my advice (kids, listen up): You may not think smoking the Mary J is a big deal now, but you'll be changing your tune when you start hearing God, the Devil and Zeus all talking to you at once, convincing you you can fly and that your coworker is poisoning your lunch. Just saying. You should probably wait to inhale until you're a bit older.*

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In high school, my best friend and I were convinced that Vladimir and Estragon (protagonists in Becket's Waiting for Godot), were super stoned. Why else did they keep waiting/forgetting they were waiting for Godot?

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In other crazy drug-related news, a bunch of people (in Texas and Seattle, according to this article, but California has this issue as well) have recently gotten botulism from black tar heroin. Yes, BOTULISM. The canned food disease. (Evidently this is old news...but it's new news to me, as everything I know about heroin I learned from watching Intervention, and none of the heroin addicts (that I've seen so far) have had to be hospitalized due to botulism.) Most of the heroin-related botulism cases come from wounds associated with injection sites.

(Aside: Remarkably, people have been known to get MULTIPLE CASES of "wound botulism" (as the medical literature calls it) at their heroin injection sites. You'd think once would be enough to learn your lesson, but apparently not!)

Another even more dire potential complication of black tar heroin use is necrotizing fasciitis (aka flesh-eating bacteria), one of the only diseases I can't even read about because it is so utterly terrifying. (Seriously. I didn't even look at the text of that Wikipedia article I just linked to; I don't want nightmares tonight!) There is no way to get rid of botulism from heroin (I have no idea if the flesh-eating bacteria is get-riddable, but let's just assume no), so it's probably best to stay away from the black tootsie roll. Aaaand...that's all I have to say about that.

This has been your PSA for the day. Stay away from the drugs, kiddos.

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*This is by no means an endorsement of smoking weed or any other illegal substances.