Sprouts are not a health food. But there’s lots of other food safety myths. USA Today's Elizabeth Weise spoke with food safety experts to pull together a list of the most common food safety myths.

* Mayonnaise is a death trap.

Actually, mayonnaise is an ingredient "with penicillin-like properties," says Don Zink, senior science adviser for the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in College Park, Md. Mayo is a homogenized mixture of oil and water, with egg white to stabilize it. The salt and vinegar or lemon juice makes the tiny droplets of water suspended in the mixture deadly to microbes. So for a safer salad, don't hold the mayo. Putting in more mayonnaise only makes it safer, he says. No, not forever, but certainly long enough for a picnic.

• Pink pork is a no-no.

Not any more. Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture revised its decades-old guidelines and now says that pork, and all whole meat cuts, have to get to only 145 degrees internally, not the 160 the agency had previously suggested. That means a pork roast can have a rosy interior, not the dead gray of your mom's roast. The change comes because despite everything you were ever told, there's no trichinosis in commercial pigs. The parasitic disease is caused by eating raw or undercooked meat infected with roundworm larvae. It was a problem years ago, but no longer exists in commercially grown pork, according to the National Pork Board in Des Moines.

• You can smell when food's gone bad.

Microorganisms divide into two main groups, those that cause spoilage and those that cause disease. There's some overlap, but many bacteria that cause disease don't cause overt spoilage. "You could have loads of E. coli or salmonella or listeria in a food and it would not appear to be spoiled or have any off-odor or flavor," says the FDA's Don Zink. The only real way to judge the safety of a food is by what you know about how it was prepared and stored.

• You should wash produce and meat.

This one seems like a no-brainer: Washing makes things cleaner, right? Wrong. People think they can make produce safer by rinsing it under the tap, but that's a holdover from the days when they carried in vegetables straight from the garden, still dripping with dew, dirt and the occasional slug. Bagged leafy greens don't need to be washed at all. "Just open the bag and put them in the salad bowl," says the FDA's Zink. They were already washed in a sanitizing solution at the packing plant and frankly it was probably a lot cleaner than your kitchen.

Micro-organisms actually bond to the surface of the food item. "You are not going to rinse them off, it simply won't happen, they cannot be washed off," he says.

All washing might do is "remove the snot that some 3-year-old blew onto the food at the grocery store," says the ever-forthright Powell at Kansas State. Washing "lowers the pathogen count a little, but not to safe levels if it's contaminated."

Even though half the recipes involving meat tell you to rinse it off (especially chicken and turkey), this is unnecessary and actually dangerous, says Elisabeth Hagen, under- secretary for food safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Rinsing meat or poultry with water can actually increase your chance of food poisoning by splashing raw juices and any bacteria they might contain onto your sink and counters."

• If the water touched your hands, they're clean.

Think a quick rinse of your hands before you handle food is good enough? Nice try. A good hand-washing takes at least 20 seconds, says Doug Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan., who has written research papers on the topic. The real cleansing is done by the friction and force of rubbing your hands together, along with the soap. The temperature of the water doesn't really matter, as it takes 160 degrees to kill bacteria, which would be fine except water that hot would also give you third-degree burns. But warm water does make it more likely you'll spend the necessary 10 seconds scrubbing under vigorously flowing water. And then another 10 seconds of vigorous rubbing with a towel. "The friction rips the microbes off your skin," says Powell. If you really want to go for the gusto, invest in a nail brush. "Because if you had a Number Two and you experienced 'slippage' with your toilet paper, that's where the pathogens go, under your nails."

The food safety bureaucrats who say cook food until it’s piping hot have come out with an entire publication about what it means to be science-based.

The U.K. Food Standards Agency says science is fighting back against pseudoscience and asks whether the Agency has played a role in this.

For an agency with multi-millions to spend on food safety communication, why can’t they get the science right, and stick it in?

Use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer. Color and piping hot are pseudoscience.
 

In the latest installment of Whole Foods Market has terrible food safety advice -- blaming consumers for getting sick, selling raw milk in some stores, offering up fairytales about organic and natural foods – today’s grilling tip is that “chicken that is cooked enough will feel springy when pressed. If you’re uncertain, cut into the thickest part of one piece. The meat should still be juicy, but the juices should be clear, never reddish.”

Color is a lousy indicator.

Use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer.

Toronto’s Globe and Mail has gotten into the trend of using someone with what appears to be an Australian accent to flog food but seems to skimp on the food safety.

Stephen Alexander, owner of Cumbrae Meats, says in a video  that, “cooking a burger to medium is totally fine as long as you start with good quality fresh ground meat.”

I don’t know what medium means. How is good quality defined, by bacterial counts? And where’s the thermometer, the same one Alexander uses when cooking chicken on the grill but that Whole Foods doesn't know exists.

Cook’s Illustrated likes its burgers “juicy and rosy throughout.” 

Eric Lewis, a reporter with the Times & Transcript in New Brunswick (that’s in Canada), writes in this opinion piece:

Any time I hear of a restaurant shut down for health violations, I can't wait to read what they did wrong so I can gauge whether or not I want to ever try go there in the first place or go back if I've been there already. Luckily, none of the places I frequent have violated any major rules or been shut down, far as I can recall.

Just prior to Christmas, it was reported that one local restaurant had been fined for continuing to serve customers after a health inspector ordered it closed, violating the Food Premises Regulation of the Public Health Act.

The restaurant in question has since passed another inspection and all previous non-compliances have been corrected, which is great. Accidents happen, mistakes can be made but - especially in an area such as food preparation - they absolutely must be corrected.

I worked for a few years as a teen in a fast-food restaurant. Say what you will about the 'quality' of food you get in most fast-food places, but they have to follow the same regulations other restaurants do.

I remember well having to store food a certain number of inches off the floor, having to check temperatures of coolers and warmers and having to wash your hands so frequently that your hands nearly screamed for a bit of moisturizer by the end of the shift.

I'm a big fan of the provincial Department of Health's restaurant inspection page it launched a few years ago.

Located at http://www1.gnb.ca/0601/fseinspectresults.asp , the site allows anyone to view the results of the most recent inspections completed for every restaurant in the province. Any violations, major or minor, are right there for you to read all about. Restaurants are rated using a colour-coded system that gives you an idea how they're faring.

Green means the restaurant has a high standard of compliance with no more than five minor violations. There are five levels in total, with a solid red meaning a restaurant's licence has been revoked for non-compliance.

It's an interesting tool. Upon a quick search this week, it appears most restaurants in the province are green, while there are a few yellows and the odd restaurant in the red.