Army colonel tries old C-ration pound cake, doesn't get botulism
Field rations for soldiers are designed with two primary motives: 1) providing lots of calories and 2) lasting in a combat zone. 
For the most part, taste is greatly sacrificed. But retired Army colonel Henry A. Moak, Jr., thought his 40-year-old C-ration can of pound cake was "good."
Moak got the drab olive can as a Marine helicopter pilot off the Vietnamese coast in 1973. He vowed to hang on to it until the day he retired, storing it in a box with other mementos.
"It's even a little moist," he said, wiping his mouth after downing a handful in the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes following a formal retirement ceremony.
Retired Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, who was the U.S. Army Europe commander when Moak served overseas, took an even bigger piece. "Tastes just like it always did," Mikolashek mumbled with a mouthful of cake as Moak laughed and clapped.
The AP reports,
"Moak said he wasn't worried about getting sick from any bacteria that may have gotten into the old can, because it looked sealed. But the military discourages eating from old rations.
"'Given the risks ... we do everything possible to ensure that overly aged rations are not consumed,' said Lawrence Levine, a spokesman for the Defense Supply Center in Philadelphia.
"Levine named the threats as mold and deadly botulism if the sealing on the food has been broken, which isn't always visible."
Mold, maybe. Botulism, no; it arises from improper canning initially - or denting later - but not broken seals. (They only open the possibility of contamination to microbes that like air: B. cereus, Lavine...)
Color-changing bar codes could indicate safety
I knew Mom wanted us to have dinner with the family, so when my stomach started growling on the four-hour drive to her house I dutifully chose a strawberry milk at the truck stop over the fried chicken I knew was at the counter.
My husband and I both got a bottle of pink moo juice (which is markedly different from yellow cow water) and one was past its “Use by” date.
When I walked back in to tell the cashier, she simply said, “Ew,” and held out her hand for the offending product while I went to get a new one.
I knew the date on the bottle told me when my drink would taste the best; it didn’t really say much about whether it was safe.
Safety is a result of a product’s history.
Brett Lucht and William Euler -- chemistry professors at the University of Rhode Island – came up with a nearly invisible dye that will turn red when a package of food gets above 40 F.
That could tell me whether a bottle of milk was likely to be safe before I bought it.
The professors also have a patent for a two-bar code system that uses one made with color-changing dye to mask the one that’s typically scanned at the checkout when the product has warmed up too much.
Sounds pretty cool. I wonder which manufacturers would be willing to use it?
Souse your steak to ward off cancer
After spending all day leaning against an abandoned shed in the woods with just a rifle and a 
flashlight, my husband got his doe.
That means lots of deer burger, a few roasts and several steaks are now stuffed in our freezer to feed us cheap for a while.
I’m new to the taste of venison and really hate the way it smells when it's browning, but my husband makes a delicious teriyaki marinade that covers the gamey taste of those deer steaks perfectly.
He leaves mine on the grill until it's well-done. That’s how I like it. I think more rare meat has a stringy/gummy texture that is most undesirable.
I know my preference is among the minority, though.
My food microbiology professor boasted of eating his steaks near raw: As long as the steaks haven’t been pierced before cooking (which would allow any bacteria on the outside to get inside the meat), the cook only needs to sear the surface to be rid of most things that could make him sick.
Some people shy away from well-done steaks because meats cooked to high temperatures form heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAs). These HAs are thought to contribute to some types of cancer.
There is hope for the devout well-done crowd, though. Food chemists in Portugal have found that the formation of HAs is significantly reduced when beef steaks are marinated in red wine or beer for six hours before being pan-fried.
I wonder how it does with venison?
When worlds collide: engineering and food safety
After breakfast in the morning, my husband and I go our separate ways until dinner. Bret, .jpg)
who studied agricultural engineering in college, designs turf equipment. That’s him at right on an old prototype mower managing the turf in our backyard.
As you all know, I studied food science and industry. With the help of Doug and Phebus, I found my way to writing about food safety.
Our worlds collided this morning when I pulled his engineering magazine out of the pile of mail in the kitchen and saw the words “food safety” staring back at me.
The cover article was by another ag engineer, Nathan Anderson, who works with the FDA’s National Center for Food Safety and Technology in Illinois.
In the article, Anderson points out that,
“Increased concern over microbiological safety in terms of public health and international trade has led to a shift in how microbial risks are assessed and controlled.”
In order to have fewer sick people and more world trade, governments are adopting new risk-based approaches to food safety management and ditching the old prescriptive control measures.
Anderson’s article describes the Food Safety Objective (FSO) approach to risk management, which sets as a goal a maximum population for a certain microbe in the food being processed.
Processors must then control the levels of the microbe on/in incoming product initially, reduce levels if necessary, and prevent any increases.
This, of course, can be expressed by a mathematical equation (since it’s an engineering concept). But I won’t do that here.
Developing processes based upon known risks—as opposed to long-standing beliefs—is a smart way to do business. Engineers just say it differently than food safety writers.
Engineer:
burger + E. coli + food thermometer > burger + E. coli + color-based estimate
Food safety writer:
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Home test kit for E. coli and Salmonella?
With the recent string of food recalls, food and health retailers are scrambling to offer instant food testing kits for E.coli and Salmonella manufactured by Magna Medical Services, Inc. MMS Quick Results Food Testing Kits are home food test kits for E.coli and Salmonella.
“Retailers will be able to sell home kits for E.coli and Salmonella to clients that need to quickly check their food areas and food products for possible bacteria outbreaks,” says Robert Greene, General Manager for Magna Medical Services, Inc “This is a product that should be right next to every home first aid kit.
They also put out releases following the 2006 spinach-linked E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, and another that cites "recent E. coli outbreaks that have affected the Northeastern United States" back in January. Seem to be capitalizing on public interest in food safety, but I have lots of questions about the product.
Does this product even work (and how would we know)?
Where is the data (because it's not on their website)?
How sensitive is it?
What's the utility of using quick strips on food in your home?
How do you sample food in your house?
What would happen if a firm,or a temporary food stand, or my mom used these strips, the results showed no contamination, and the food still resulted in an outbreak?
Maybe it's a good tool, but without some of these questions answered I file MMS into the huckster category, capitalizing on food safety hysteria. Maybe MMS have some good answers, and I welcome any comments on this product here on barfblog.
Some of my food microbiologist friends are struggling with figuring out the best way to use traditional, labour-intensive methods of sampling different foods (especially produce) and there are disagreements on sample preparation. Seems MMS has got it all figured out. And only for "less than $4 USD"
I think what MMS is trying to sell is a magic bullet -- test with our strips and you can be sure about your food. And without the data, I'm not sure they can say that, I don't believe that there are magic bullets in food safety, it's not that simple.
Saving the world one sucker at a time
The Rhode Island Oyster Gardening for Restoration and Enhancement program at Roger Williams University is putting oysters in the state's waterways to filter out pollution and rev up the ecosystem.Each little sucker takes in up to 50 gallons of water in a day, clearing out pollutants, plankton, and silt so that the water is nice and clean for the aquatic plants below. These plants, along with tiny fish that like to live in the oyster beds, attract winter flounder and lobster can be harvested for us to eat. The area's aquaculture producers are happy about that one.
The oysters also clean up after crop fertilizers. Nitrogen from agricultural runoff is sucked up and oxygen abounds for our newfound aquaculture.
Clean water, more food, and a pick-up system for ag chemicals. I, for one, am impressed. All hail the mighty oyster: saving the world one sucker at a time.
You got a reaction, didn't you? You took a white orchid turned it blue
Typing "almond" and "pasteurization" into a Google search brings up the Almond Board's action plan to pasteurize all California almonds, followed by a long list of websites with content criticizing the Board's decision, including: Mandatory almond pasteurization is WRONG; We like it raw; and Raw food, right now (followed by lots of exclamation marks).If you read my postings you know that I feel strongly about the need to pasteurize milk. As I read through the almond arguments I see strong parallels between the two debates, and for good reason, they're both rooted in this burgeoning need to eat as nature intended, without the interference of any sort of large-scale food technology. But I'm much less familiar with the history of almonds and foodborne illness and at this point I can appreciate both the consumer and industry's point-of-view. I do however agree that pasteurized almonds should not be labeled raw because by definition they are not.
At any rate, I had a good chuckle reading the following excerpt from the Cleansing Blog this morning:
"Many almond growers, not surprisingly, are hopping mad at the ABC for this “pasteurization tyranny” that will now require almond growers to kill a perfectly good product before they can sell it to consumers. It’s almost like being in the flower business and, after growing beautiful orchids for your customers, some stupid state agency comes along and says you have to cook all the flowers before you can sell them because somebody once stuck their nose in a pot of orchids and sniffed up a creepy crawler. Cooked orchids, alas, are not nearly as beautiful as living orchids."
Thanks to the White Stripes (American rock band) for the catchy title; should attract some fresh faces to the world of food safety communication.
