Eating raw Toll House refrigerated cookie dough may have sickened up to 66 people nationwide with E. coli bacteria infections. Federal officials say consumers should throw out any cookie dough, and Nestle USA says that the products can be returned to grocery stores for a full refund.
However tempting, people should never eat raw cookie dough. And even though baking the dough could kill any bacteria, the feds are being cautious because handling the pre-cooked dough could spread the bacteria to hands and kitchen surfaces.
It’s unclear how the dough may have been contaminated, the New York Times reported. E. coli is usually linked to bad meat and can cause cramps, vomiting and bloody diarrhea.
Restaurants aren’t doing you a favor by offering a kiddie menu; they’re helping to supersize your child. The standard offerings of mac and cheese, burgers and chicken fingers are loaded with fat and sodium.
So what’s a parent to do?
Diabetes educator and mom Hope Warshaw told the Houston Chronicle that families should order off the regular adult menu. Instead of chicken nuggets, try an order of grilled chicken and veggies and share it with your child. “We need to take food decisions a lot more seriously than we do,” she says. “It’s about realizing sometimes that food can be a battle zone, but the battle is worth fighting.”
The Institute of Medicine has some numbers that should scare parents into action. Kids ages 4 to 8 shouldn’t have more than 1,200 milligrams of salt a day. But a kiddie meal at a typical restaurant blows that cap. The kiddie nuggets at Chili’s restaurant has 1,600 milligrams of sodium. The kid’s cheese pizza at the Olive Garden has 1,170 milligrams. A couple of meals out, and your kids are walking salt-shakers.
Warshaw, a dietician, had the following tips to help make your child’s dining-out experience healthier:
– Eat at ethnic restaurants, which encourage “family-style” sharing of entrees.
– Order low-fat milk or water. Avoid soda and fruit juices.
– Divide desserts.
– Be a role model. Don’t lecture your kids and then pig out on fatty foods.
Don’t supersize that bottle.
If your baby gains a lot of weight during the first six months of her life, she could be obese by the time she’s in preschool, according to a study in the medical journal Pediatrics.
How much weight a kid gains and how suddenly that happens is a bigger factor in determining childhood obesity than how much the baby weighed at birth, the mom’s weight during pregnancy or the weight of the kid’s parents, according to the researchers. The Harvard Medical School study followed 559 mother-child pairs in the Boston area. Researchers found that a baby weighing 18.4 pounds after six months had a 40 percent greater risk of obesity by age 3 than a kid who weighed 16.9 pounds.
Pediatricians interviewed by the Chicago Tribune weren’t so sure that parents should put their fat babies on a diet, though. Dr. Mary Hall said that some kids stabilize in weight between the sixth and ninth months. Still, she said that it’s best that parents not always respond to their babies by offering food. “They may need to hold the baby, change the baby’s diaper, or the baby may be tired,” she said.
Breathe! Push! And have some yogurt, will ya?
Doctors have long told women not to eat while in labor, but a new study now says that some light snacking doesn’t harm mom or baby. Previouly there was fear eating could lead to breathing food in the lungs in case of an emergency C-section.
Researchers compared two groups of moms — one was only allowed to drink water and the other could have bread, fruits, yogurt and fruit juice during delivery, AFP News reported. The study of 2,426 moms found that there was no difference between the two groups in terms of duration of labor, percentage of C-sections or even rate of vomiting. The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, suggested that fasting while in labor could even be more harmful since who wants to work on an empty stomach?
Waste not, want not?
Kindergarten teacher Anne O’Donnell is accused of forcing a student to eat his lunch after he tossed it in the garbage. The 5-year-old boy, who was not publicly named, had thrown out his cafeteria lunch of chicken nuggets and a banana. O’Donnell allegedly took the items out of the trash and then gave them to the boy to eat, the Associated Press reported.
O’Donnell, 67, of Fairfield, Conn., was charged on Tuesday with risk of injury to a minor. The alleged garbage-eating happened last week at Park City Magnet School.
Two new studies suggest that such a treatment could help children increase their tolerance for nuts.
Researchers gave allergic kids doses that began as small as one-thousandth of a peanut and gradually upped their intake to about 15 peanuts a day. Many of the kids in the studies were able to tolerate the treatment, but four kids dropped out because they had allergic reactions. The research at Duke University and Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock involved a small sampling, just 33 kids in one study and 18 in another.
Researchers, who presented the results at a conference on Sunday, said the the results were promising and could eventually lead to some sort of treatment for peanut allergies, the New York Times reported. For now, parents are advised not to try such treatments as home. About 2.2 million American children suffer from food allergies, and exposure can lead to severe reactions and even death.
McDonald’s is loving it. One quarter of an average child’s vegetable intake consists of French fries, according to a new study.
As for fruit, kids are getting 40 percent of their intake through juices, which often contain high amounts of sugar. The study, conducted by Ohio State researchers, examined government data on 6,500 kids ages two through 18.
Barbara Lorson, an Ohio State dietitian, told USA Today of one suggestion for parents: offer your child fresh produce when he’s especially hungry.
Another new study offers a less cruel way to entice kids — rename the vegetables. Four-year-olds ate twice as many carrots when they were told that the veggie were “X-ray vision carrots.” Other ”cool” food names suggested by Cornell University researchers: power peas and dinosaur broccoli trees.
Photo by Scott Abelman
Maybe shoppers thought she was preparing free samples?
Wearing rubber gloves, Shirley W. Ybarra opened up jars of baby food and sprayed the contents with ammonia at a busy South Florida supermarket. She acted like she knew what she was doing, and so for about 15 minutes, none of the shoppers or workers stopped her.
When someone finally questioned her, she calmly said that she was mixing food for her son, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. Her son is 21 years old and doesn’t live in the area.
Ybarra, 50, was charged with poisoning food last Thursday and appeared in court on Monday, where a judge ordered her held without bond. The Publix supermarket in Tamarac pulled all jars of baby food from its shelves. Authorities checked with other stores in the area and don’t believe that Ybarra visited them.
Will peanut butter snacks ever be trusted again?
On Friday, companies started recalling all peanut products made at a west Texas plant since the factory’s 2005 opening. More than 100 companies are involved. This adds to the long list of products already recalled since hundreds of people began getting sick from salmonella poisoning in January. Click here for an updated recall list.
It’s not only school lunches that are being affected. Those Easter baskets are going to be quite light this year. Many businesses, slammed with recall costs, have already decided not to bother making chocolate-peanut snacks for the holiday, the Associated Press reported.
The plant in Plainview, Texas, had many of the sanitary problems as the one in Blakely, Ga. — dead rats, excrement and bird feathers. Unfortunately, there’s little recourse for the thousands of farmers, consumers and businesses hurt by Peanut Corp. of America, which allegedly shipped products knowing that they were tainted. The company declared bankruptcy on Friday, which will shield it from liability lawsuits filed by consumers, CNN reported.
Earlier this week, PCA president Stewart Parnell was summoned up to Congress, where he refused to testify by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. He also refused to eat any peanut paste. At least nine people have already died from his company’s products.
In at least 12 tests of its peanut butter, a Georgia food plant found salmonella bacteria, according to federal investigators. But the factory sent the products on to food manufacturers such as Kellogg, which then turned the toxic paste into crackers and cookies.
More than 500 people have been sickened from eating tainted foods — 20 percent of those ill are kids under the age of 5. Federal officials say the source of the outbreak is a Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Ga.
Hold onto your stomachs: Salmonella wasn’t the only problem. Mold grew on the ceiling and walls of the factory. Foot-long gaps also punctured the roof, the New York Times reported. Holes in doors were large enough to let in rats, and grease and rust residue permeated throughout. It’s not reported why the Georgia Department of Agriculture did not shut down the plant after finding repeated sanitation violations. We say, let them eat peanut butter!
For an updated list of what peanut products being recalled (hopefully to be force-fed to crooked plant managers), click here.
UPDATE: The recall of peanut products is being expanded to everything produced at the plant since Jan. 1, 2007. Peanut butter and paste from the factory are used in hundreds of foods, from stir-fry sauces to doggie biscuits.