Listeria and food...

Read this in your e-newsletter the other day and learned alot. Heck, I learn alot and thoroughly

enjoy ALL of your newsletters. Thanks for sharing your love of food and cooking/baking with us, Sally, and of course informative articles like this one about Listeria and the food we eat.

You're a gem!

 
What an in-depth article from someone like you, a biochemist and molecular

biologist. Your article is certainly more detailed than my ServSafe Food Manager Certified training on listeria!

Thanks Sally! I've saved your very interesting article.

 
Hello there! Welcome to the forum....

Cyalexa is a dear friend of mine, folks... Glad she joined this place!

 
Thanks, everybody...

I don't normally post a link to my blog for "no reason", but thought that the subject would be worth mentioning.

I think the fact that Listeria grows in the fridge is a point that is not talked about loudly and often enough - it's such an interesting, but dangerous aspect of this fascinating "bug"

When I started working with it, I did not quite believe it would be possible, but it's amazing to see the size of colonies on a plate get bigger and bigger when you store the plates in the fridge. That simply never happens with E.coli, Salmonella etc etc etc

 
2 questions: is dishwashing detergent the kind for dishwashers with bleach in it? and

does heat kill it? We went to dinner and one fella at the table refused to have any vegetables on his pizza because of possible contamination. just wondering if baking at high temp like pizza is long enough to kill it.

 
I've found that a 30 second gargle with Listeria Blue leaves my mouth tasting minty fresh!

(I know, I know but it gave you pause, right?)

 
Any dishwashing soap will work...

... in fact, you just touched another pet peeve of mine, regarding stuff with 'anti-bacterial' additives. There is absolutely NO NEED for any of that, basic soap and hot water will do. Anti-bacterial wipes, solutions and sprays get a lot of advertisement, people buy them because they give an illusion of extra-safety. Don't waste your money on those, not only they are no more effective than simple soaps, but they expose micro organisms to chemical compounds that might, in the long run, generate strains resistant to them, in a process similar to what we already witnessed concerning antibiotics.

As to the pizza: the extreme heat in the oven will kill pretty much anything - so there's no need to skip a nice eggplant pizza for fear of getting sick. Salads, cold meats (sandwich type), cheeses, undercooked meats are where the danger lies.

 
Sally, this year's theme for LEGO Robotics is food safety

and some of my teams are researching the Listeria outbreaks. They are supposed to develop something to help prevent outbreaks. I wondered if they could Skype you one day, perhaps? They have to talk to experts in the field, and bounce their ideas off them. Would you be interested in that?

 
Nice!

If I can be of any help, have the contact me

they can drop me an email at snewton at ou.edu and we go from there...

 
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