Sit and drink Salmonella tea?
Another in a long line of Salmonella in low water activity foods (here, here and here), Fireside Coffee is recalling packages of their chai tea due to possible Salmonella contamination. The recall includes certain flavors of the tea: spiced, chocolate, vanilla and decaf vanilla.
According to AP:
No illness has been reported. The recalled chai tea was sold nationwide at retail stores, through mail order and at art fairs. The recall includes select lot numbers of four flavors of the tea: spiced, chocolate, vanilla and decaf vanilla. Details: by phone at 800-344-5282.
Growing up in the age of grunge, Salmonella tea reminded me of the flannel-wearing guitar heroes of my youth, check out Nirvana's Pennyroyal Tea below. This MTV unplugged special actually did blow my mind when I was 14.
Antenna in your mocha latte?
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) maintains a list of Food Action Defect Levels in the Code of Federal Regulations "to establish maximum levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods for human use that present no health hazard." 
A local news station in Michigan got hold of this list and started asking people on the street how they felt about the number of bug parts allowed in their coffee and the amount of rodent "excreta" tolerated in their chocolate.
My local news station in Wichita, Kansas, broadcast their story Tuesday while I shook my head and chuckled. There were a lot of interesting faces as people looked from their cup to the list and back again.
In the end, I got the impression that the public is okay with a few bug parts (and laugh about getting the extra protein), but won't stand for the poop.
We here at barfblog.com continually advocate keeping as much poop out of food as possible, and proudly wear our t-shirts that declare, "don't eat poop" with a message about handwashing on the back.
But I'm not crazy. I realize, like the FDA (not the USDA, as asserted in the story, which primarily regulates only meat and poultry products), that it's virtually impossible to keep the entire (non-meat and -poultry) food supply 100% poop-free. Therefore, I'm glad there are regulations in place to reduce the microbial risks associated with that poop. (The poop that got into the peanuts at the Peanut Corp. of America plant violated those regs.)
I'm just saying... some poop happens. Risks that cannot be eliminated can, and should, be controlled. Responsible, informed producers and consumers do this every day with tools like the FDA Defect Action Level Handbook and tip-sensitive digital meat thermometers.
Do your part: wash your hands and stick it in.
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'I'd like to compliment you on the shape of your skull': coffee can be a hallucinogen
In the early 1990s, I worked with a guy who said, “When I retire, I’m going to have a front porch with a couple of huge amps, my electric guitar, play Jimi Hendrix, and do a lot of hallucinogens.”
But I recall he drank a lot of coffee. And researchers at Durham University in the U.K. announced yesterday in the journal, Personality and Individual Differences, that high caffeine consumption could be linked to a greater tendency to hallucinate.
People with a higher caffeine intake, from sources such as coffee, tea and caffeinated energy drinks, are more likely to report hallucinatory experiences such as hearing voices and seeing things that are not there, according to the Durham University study.
'High caffeine users' – those who consumed more than the equivalent of seven cups of instant coffee a day - were three times more likely to have heard a person's voice when there was no one there compared with 'low caffeine users' who consumed less than the equivalent of one cup of instant coffee a day.
In the study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Medical Research Council, 200 students were asked about their typical intake of caffeine containing products, such as coffee, tea and energy drinks as well as chocolate bars and caffeine tablets. Their proneness to hallucinatory experiences, and their stress levels, were also assessed. Seeing things that were not there, hearing voices, and sensing the presence of dead people were amongst the experiences reported by some of the participants.
Maybe people who do a lot of acid or ‘shrooms drink a lot of coffee and eat a bunch of chocolate.
Cat poop coffee
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2008/01/05/mi.cat.poo.coffee.beans.wzzm
Cat poop coffee, or kopi luwak -- otherwise known as the most expensive coffee in the world -- is, according to wiki, coffee made from coffee berries which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). The civets eat the berries but the beans inside pass through their system undigested. This process takes place on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago, and in the Philippines (where the product is called Kape Alamid). Vietnam has a similar type of coffee, called weasel coffee which are coffee berries which have been defecated by local weasels. In actuality the "weasel" is just the local version of the Asian Palm Civet.Lots has been written about cat poop coffee, but here's a more graphic representation from a few months ago.
And don't eat poop.
Brewing coffee from cat poop
According to ITN and Yahoo! News:
"Makers claim they gather undigested seeds from ripe coffee cherries, that have passed through the stomachs of civet cats and use them to make the drink.
It has been suggested enzymes in the animal's stomach break down the proteins in the seeds and give them a bitter taste that enhances the flavour."
They may be right about the poop seeds affecting the flavor, but the safety risk of this practice is high. The filth that these seeds come from could contain E. coli or other fecal coliforms that can lead to health issues. We'll keep an eye on this practice, but I wouldn't be surprised if we hear about a few people getting sick off of this practice. Read the full article here.
