Salmonella tomatoes - to eat or not to eat?

If you haven’t been living in a cave in the last month or so, you’ve heard about the salmonella outbreak in tomatoes.  At least the FDA “thinks” that it might be tomatoes carrying the salmonella - according to a report I read this week, they weren’t even sure that tomatoes are the culprit.

When I first heard about the problem, I was initially annoyed - I mean, lettuce, then spinach, now tomatoes -and I’m sure I missed some of the problem foods.  The FDA is always announcing one vegetable or another that is “unsafe” to eat.

And then when I heard that someone close to my hometown was infected from a tomato, I was scared.

“Maybe I should stop eating tomatoes!” I thought.

And then I did a little research.  Turns out, salmonella is rarely fatal - only in infants, very young children, the elderly and people with weak immune systems can salmonella be fatal.

The FDA says that the rest of us, if infected, might have diarrhea, fever, and abdominal pains.

Hmm.  That’s not quite the devastating illness that I thought was happening.

The bottom line is that we should be eating as close to home-grown vegetables as we possibly can.  Buying at a Farmers Market, a grocery store that specializes in organic foods, or even the organic section of your traditional grocery store, is safer than buying tomatoes that are non-organic.

The reason is because non-organic tomatoes are treated with chemicals & pesticides, and the water used to nurture those tomatoes is extremely questionable.

But even if you can’t buy organic for whatever reason… take care of your body & your health enough so that if you get a little salmonella bacteria into your body, your immune system can handle it.  That’s what our immune system is there for - to attack “enemy” bacteria and keep you from getting sick!

So eat healthy.  Eat natural, unprocessed foods whenever and as often as possible.  And when you do eat processed foods, get as close to natural as you can get.  Buy whole grain pasta, bread, tortillas and flour.

Keep your immune system at its peak, and things like tomatoes or spinach or whatever the latest “scare” is won’t be quite so daunting.

Bethany