How to prepare a cantaloupe - Is Salmonella a risk?

Posted: March 27th, 2008 - 10:04am by Doug Powell

In March, 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advised people not to eat cantaloupes from a Honduran grower because the fruits may be contaminated with Salmonella and have sickened 50 people in the U.S. and Canada.

Doug Powell of the International Food Safety Network looks at how cantaloupes and prepared and what you can do, if anything, to reduce the risk of Salmonella from the melons.

The latest iFSN infosheet recommends that cantaloupe be refrigerated as soon as they have been sliced up because bacteria such as Salmonella, can grow nicely on the orange meat of the fruit at room temperature.

If you wash the outside of the cantaloupe, vigorously use a scrub brush under running water to remove any easy-to-get to bacteria (and try not to splash the water all around the kitchen).







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Categories: Salmonella
Tags: Cantaloupe

Comments

Family Nutritionist says:

The video seem to be at odds with the factsheet. The factsheet devotes so much ink to problems with washing that it seems to imply that, of course, all cantaloupes are going to be washed. The video starts with a discussion of the difficulty of washing cantaloupes, then spends a lot of time on pointers for minimizing contamination of the flesh via kitchen surfaces (hands, board, and knife). Even though the fact sheet and video might not actually contradict each other, they seem to. It is a little confusing, and it takes a some rereading to work out that the fact sheet doesn't actually say "Scrub your cantaloupe."

Posted on March 27th, 2008 - 12:14pm

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