Murderous Crops

What’s happening in the produce aisle these days is scarier than Paris Hilton on a bender. Spinach, lettuce and carrot juice are making people very ill, even paralysing them or killing them. How can it be that there’s suddenly a rash of people too stupid to know how to use a refrigerator as the company that put out the carrot juice has claimed? No, it’s definitely some sort of trend, like flying truck wheels or school shootings. They arrive in clusters for a reason.

Today we learned about a man from Collingwood who nearly died from eating a baked potato. A baked potato! He was on a ventilator for 3 months – yes, in a vegetative state. He still has trouble seeing and other lingering effects from the botulism. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much information about said potato except that it was purchased at a restaurant in Meaford. Was the actual potato the problem, or was it a condiment that had gone bad? We’re left to believe the trouble was the tuber but the article doesn’t make it clear.

When I was first on my own, I contracted salmonella, which is a potentially deadly form of food poisoning. I got it from bad chicken. I can remember the humiliated feeling when the local Health Inspector came to my house and tapped a “quarantine” sign on my door. I felt like a leper. It was an awful illness and my roommate, Sue, was less than pleased to be quarantined with me because she was working in the food service industry. Fortunately, she didn’t get sick.

I now know everything there is to know about dealing with poultry. But no one predicted that vegetables would one day pose such a health threat. This gives kids everywhere ammunition to turn up their little noses at a serving of broccoli.