Taco Bell is being blamed for outbreaks of salmonellia in 21 states.

Bill Marler, who is considered, at least by reporters at most major newspapers who eagerly use his  juicy quotes, to be the country’s leading food safety lawyer, is already filing suits on behalf of  victims of the nation’s most recent salmonella outbreak.

A colony of salmonella spores captured by CDC scientists.

His first client is a 45-year-old mother from Kentucky who allegedly contracted the sometimes-lethal pathogen after eating at a Taco Bell.  For Marler, suing the Mexican fast outlet is like a homecoming. His Seattle-based firm litigated two prior food poisoning outbreaks at Taco Bell. In 2000, there was a hepatitis outbreak in green onions and in 2006 an E. coli outbreak sickened many patrons.

“Since the outbreak is so widespread, it’s likely that the contamination was on the vegetables when they arrived at the stores and not something that happened while the food was being prepared,” Marler told me this morning.

The Centers for Disease Control analysis of biological samples collected from food poisoning victims in 21 states say that at least 155 people were proven to have been exposed to the same two rare strains of salmonella. The federal disease detectives that other Mexican food outlets may also be a source of the illness.

Meanwhile, the number of people already sickened by salmonella after possibly eating at Taco Bell and other Mexican fast-food outlets in 21 states may increase beyond the 155 cases already reported.

Although CDC and the Food and Drugs Administration say the reports of illness from these strains appear to have peaked, the is a two week to three week lag from the time a diner gets sick and when take illness popped up on a federal disease database.

In past outbreaks of salmonella and E. coli, the pathogens were linked to lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and green onion, many of which were imported from Mexico but in these outbreaks, disease detectives have been unable to isolate the vegetable carrying the disease.

A Taco Bell spokesman said the chain’s food is “perfectly safe.”

As this point, the salmonella-caused illness have been reported in Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, North and South Carolina, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.

Here is a link to a longer version of the story that I filed this morning for AOL News.

Never mind Big Brother; your beer’s isotopes knows where you are.

By Andrew Schneider

That mug of microbrew you hoisted after work today tasted good, didn’t it? Would it have gone down as easy if you knew that it left a chemical marker showing what city you were in when you drank it? So do bottled and tap water as well as soft drinks.

It’s true. Your cellphone isn’t the only thing that can tell others your location. Scientists who can precisely measure hydrogen and oxygen isotopes can also tell where a crime victim spent the past year or whether that milk came from the farm down the road or across the country.

Biologists, geologists and analytical chemists at the University of Utah and a Salt Lake City laboratory called IsoForensics, Inc. are using this technology to help test food quality and solve cold cases for detectives around the country.

At the heart of the process is the water that is used in all beverages, from booze to baby formula. The body removes hydrogen and oxygen atoms from water and beverages that contain it and leaves a natural chemical imprint or fingerprint, explained Lesley Chesson and her colleagues in the current issue of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. “What we found is that human hair records the isotopic composition of the water that you drink,” she explained.

Chesson, an analytical chemist and the lead author of the study, explains it this way: The isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in water vary in ways that can be predicted accurately, and they reveal the latitude, elevation and proximity to coastline.

Lesley Chesson

“A distinct chemical fingerprint in your hair could be used to track your travels,” Chesson says.

There are implications for this beyond tracking human whereabouts. It’s also a way to find fraudulent food.

The Utah team is collecting honeycomb from beekeepers across the country in hopes of tracking where honey originates. If this works, federal criminal investigators from Customs, the Food and Drug Administration and the Border Patrol will finally have a way to stop the smuggling of mislabeled, often unsafe Chinese honey.

It might also be a way to determine if that pricey bottle of wine is really worth it.

Three scientists from the University of Utah and IsoForensics – Jason West, James Ehleringer, and Thure Cerling have used the technique of measuring hydrogen and oxygen stable isotopes to detect and confirm the origin of wine.  They found that the water in the wine does indeed provide a record of where the water came from—meaning the wines were clearly distinguishable by growing region.

The criminal-case uses for this technology is right out of CSI. The first case it was used on was that of a woman whose body was found in 2000 in an old bathhouse on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. It had been converted into a concert hall called Saltair.

Seven years after the woman was found, a few strands of her hair yielded a staggering number of details.

“We were able to get a snapshot of the victim’s life back through time…week by week, determine what she drank and thus her location during the period,” Chesson says.

For example, they found that the victim had made periodic moves in the two years leading up to her death, back and forth between two regions in Idaho and Utah every six or eight months.

Chesson began collecting water and hair samples from across the United States in 2007. Next she collected samples of beverages found in almost every community – Dasani brand bottled water, Coca-Cola Classic soda, and Budweiser beer.

The Utah team collected a database of the chemical characteristics of drinking water in 450 U.S. communities.

Chesson and her colleagues found that the soda, bottled and tap water offer a consistent and accurate database. (They found that Budweiser might not be a good way to track someone—the brewer, Anheuser-Busch Inc., operates 12 breweries in the U.S. A consumer could be tipping a Bud that traveled hundreds of miles to their local market.)

The team also collected milk and cow drinking-water samples from eight locations in six states and Puerility Rico then bought milk from supermarkets in 30 cities within 18 states. Yes, they can track the origin of that milk mustache.

Chesson and the other scientists from IsoForensics have put out the word to beekeepers across the U.S. to send in samples of well-identified honeycomb. so the group can refine a method to accurate identify where the honey originated. I’ve was writing about honey laundering before my former newspaper, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, closed 14 months ago and since I began covering public health for AOL News.

Believe me the bogus honey continues to flow though U.S. and onto store shelves. Honest honey importers and packers, and there are many, are trapped between shady importers who actually bounce Chinese honey from country-to-country, or just falsify the shipping papers, and the inability to actually have the golden nectar tested for country-of-origin by any laboratory outside of Germany.

If the analytical wizards in Salt Lake City can develop and confirm the accuracy of this technique, federal criminal investigators from Customs, the Food and Drug Administration and the Border Patrol will have a long-sought-after tool in U.S. efforts to halt the smuggling of mislabeled and adulterated Chinese honey.

In May, I reported that Texas A&M University palynologist and an anthropology professor Vaughn Bryant said he is doing melissopalynology – the study of pollen in honey that allows identification of its country of origin. From what Chesson told me it sounds like IsoForensics approach could wind up being more accessible and perhaps less costly than the German process.

Once you get beyond the gee-whiz factor, the Utah team’s tracking technology has  big-time implications for making sure any number of food products are safe, and accurately labeled.

Here is a link to a longer version of what I wrote today for AOL News .

(Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett contributed to this report.)

The ratio of isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen differ by geographic region.

A drink to your health? Well, maybe.

By Kathy Egan, RD

Wonder how to make a million in tough economic times? Simple: Sell a consumable repeat-purchase product that implies it will create a sense of well being.

Nutraceuticals and functional food products fit this bill amazingly well.  Consumers will pay $3, $4 or even $5 or more for a 16-ounce (or less) bottle of flavored water or juice mix spiked with dietary supplements –and the actual manufacturing cost is pennies per bottle.

These things go in cycles. First we had energy boosters. Now, drinks that promise to calm us down.

A recent New York Times piece, “Skip the Scotch, Just Have a Swig of Mellowberry” by Stephanie Rosenbloom reported on this latest trend in supplement spiked beverages: relaxation drinks.

Rosenbloom writes:

There are already more than 350 kinds of relaxation drinks on the market, according to Agata Kaczanowska, an analyst with the research company IBISWorld. Instead of slogans like Jolt’s “All the sugar and twice the caffeine,” these new drinks proffer serenity with maxims like Unwind’s “Tired of being wired?” and Drank’s “Slow your roll.”

Yes, many of us could use a slower roll, but can it be proffered in a bottle?

Some of the more than 1, 200 supplement containing beverage on sale in North America

Marketers know just how to launch these products. They know that the initial consumer reaction must be good, but not too good. These products do best flying under the radar long enough to get a group following before the experts have a chance to weigh in on them.  Then, after lots of people are using a product, consumers fall prey to false logic, i.e. it must be okay if so many people are using it.

Yet, as Rosenbloom points out, these drinks are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.

What’s a wanna-be slow-roller to do? For starters, eyeball the marketing materials. Careful reading of labels reveals that these product claims are subtly worded to allude to the desired result.  Most companies are savvy enough to avoid legally defined health/ nutrition claims. (For more information on health-claim regulation, go to the FDA website.)

Ultimately, any discussion of functional foods comes back to the two main issues around dietary supplements:

Are they what they say they are? And does the ingredient really perform the desired function?

Consumers are often lulled into a false sense of security when the product is a food or drink.  We’re not suspicious of fortified foods because Americans have been buying them since white flour became “enriched” in the 1940s. Today, an average consumer will swallow a variety of dietary supplements in the form of breakfast cereal, energy bars, juice  and milk.

There are two main resources for those interested in verifying the safety of their supplements: U.S. Pharmacopia. U.S. Pharmacopia will verify supplements and allow them to display the USP mark.  (For a list of approved brands, click here.)

NSF International has a more extensive and searchable listing of dietary supplements deemed safe  .  While USP focuses on the veracity of the ingredients, NSF emphasizes safety.

My advice: if you are interested in taking supplements–make a deliberate, educated choice based on dietary needs, weighing benefits against risks or unknowns.  Talking to a physician or nurse practitioner is wise, of course. But don’t stop there: If you don’t know how to decide what supplements might be beneficial for you, see a Registered Dietitian.

(Kathy Egan is The Food Watchdog’s resident “renaissance dietitian” and senior writer. Click here for more of her bio.)

Alfalfa sprouts recalled across country

If you’re ordering that salad or veggie sandwich, tell ‘em to hold the sprouts.

Reports of Salmonella in alfalfa sprouts have come in from 10 states. More than 20 people have been sickened by the food, and as a result Caldwell Fresh Foods of Maywood, Calif., announced a recall on Friday (5/22/2010).

According to The Associated Press, Caldwell’s product was sold in 18 states in the West, Midwest and South. All of Caldwell alfalfa products sold in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin are included in the recall.

The company, which is cooperating in the recall, says its sprouts were sold at certain outlets of Trader Joe’s, Wal-Mart, Kings Super Markets, Numero Uno, Cardenas Markets, Gonzales Northgate Markets, Jons Markets and Canton Foods.

The recalled sprouts are packaged in plastic cups and plastic bags under the Caldwell Fresh Foods brand, plastic cups under the Nature’s Choice brand and plastic containers under the California Fresh Exotics brand.

Salmonella is an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children and others with weakened immune systems. It can cause diarrhea, fever and vomiting.

Harmful levels of Bisphenol A found in almost all canned foods, new study reports.

The health hazards of bisphenol A are clearly proven, but scientists now report that the levels of the chemical – used to protect canned food from corrosion and bacteria –  are surprisingly high in the  canned goods found on our kitchen shelves.

To reach this conclusion, 50 different cans of food were collected from pantries in 19 states and Ontario and were analyzed at a top food safety lab in San Francisco. BPA was found in 92 percent of the samples according to a 24-page study called “No Silver Lining,” which was released today by the National Workgroup for Safe Markets.

The highest  level of BPA was 1,140 parts per billion – believed  to be the highest ever found in the U.S. It was detected in Del Monte French Style Green Beans from a pantry in Wisconsin, the report said.

Other high scorers included Wal-Mart’s Great Value Green Peas from a store in Kentucky, and Healthy Choice Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle Soup from a pantry in Montana, said researchers from the coalition of more than 17 public and environmental health organizations .

“Our study details potential exposure to BPA from not just one can, but from meals prepared with canned food and drink that an ordinary person might consume over the course of a day,” Mike Schade, a co-author of the study told AOL News.

The unopened cans of fruits, vegetables, beans, soups, tomato products, sodas, and milk were sent to Anresco Laboratories. In order to determine the concentrations of BPA in the food within the can, only the food, not the packaging, was tested. (more…)

Fruit and Vegetables: They have their own month

We’re in a panic around here. It’s almost June.

You know, National Fruit and Vegetable Month.

That’s right, the month-long holiday is looming and I’m in danger of being caught with a fridge full of diet soda and a fruit bowl full of car keys and old rubber bands.

Photo by Yosarian, courtesy of Wikimedia

Fortunately, wiser (and healthier) heads can prevail. Just this morning The Food Watchdog got a press release citing an article titled, “ROYGBIV: The Color of Health” by natural chef and nutritionist Patty James, co-author of the book, More Vegetables Please!

And, no, that article title is not misspelled. “ROYGBIV” is indeed intended.

It’s meant to be a little reminder about the need to eat fruit and veggies of different colors. Or, to spell it out:

Red

Orange and Yellow

Green

Blue and Indigo and Violet

White

Each of these groups has particular value. Take Reds, for example. As James writes, red peppers, potatoes and their similarly hued relatives have lycopene, which:

“Helps rid the body of damaging free radicals, protects against prostate cancer, as well as heart and lung disease. The red foods are loaded with antioxidants thought to protect against heart disease by preventing blood clots and may also delay the aging of cells in the body.”

James knows that a little memory trick goes a long way to keeping people with the program. Yet I can’t help but feel that she may be a bit too optimistic about my grasp of this approach.

If I could remember ROYGBIV, I could also remember the 97 passwords associated with my computer and internet use. I’d never stand in front of the ATM in a frozen panic. I would sort out the destinations of Interstate 205-South and Interstate 205-North, once and for all.

This is not to say that we don’t need rules. We do. They just need to be a little easier to remember. For example:

1 – If the food item can sit on its own without packaging and has a peel, seeds, stem or stalk, eat it.

2 – Make the food items take turns. If Green went at lunchtime, then Yellow gets a turn at dinner.

There, done.

Have a great month. Don’t forget to hang that eggplant out on the flagpole on June 1.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

(Better yet, see what the expert says: www.PattyJames.com)

Honey safety back in the news

That cute little bear-shaped honey bottle you grab off the supermarket shelf might not be as healthy as it looks.

For the details, see “Honey laundering bust highlights sticky problem,” a piece I wrote this week for AOL news.

–Andrew Schneider

Nanoparticles coming to a grocery near you

In the past, it took the skill or luck of the cook and the right touches of spices, herbs and other magic potions to seduce taste, texture, flavor and aroma from the communal pot.

This photo by ABC.net.AU shows nanoparticles of titanium dioxide, which, according to safety authorties, is used in thousands of consumer products, including some ice cream and icings. A recent UCLA study showed that large doses of this nanoparticle in the water of test animals caused DNA distruction.

Today, that culinary magic is being dished out by scientists rearranging atoms into chemical particles never before seen.  Some of these almost supernatural nanoparticles are heading toward your grocery shelves or, according to some government investigators, are there already.

I began chasing the intricacies of the fascinating and terrifying world of nanotechnology about 15-months ago, even before my newspaper – the Seattle Post-Intelligencer – was shut down by the corporate wizards.  This week, AOL News, my new employer, is publishing eight stories and charts and photos on nanotechnology and how it is and will impact your lives.

Scores of studies show that many nanoparticles have the potential for delivering significant harm to various organs, the blood supply, even the brain.  Some of the best food scientists in the world complain that far too few studies were being done on nanomaterial that was (or is) eaten.

Check out this cameo from the AOL story on food:

At last year’s Institute of Food Technologists international conference, nanotechnology was the topic that generated the most buzz among the 14,000 food-scientists, chefs and manufacturers crammed into an Anaheim, Calif., hall. Though it’s a word that has probably never been printed on any menu, and probably never will, there was so much interest in the potential uses of nanotechnology for food that a separate daylong session focused just on that subject was packed to overflowing.

In one corner of the convention center, a chemist, a flavorist and two food-marketing specialists clustered around a large chart of the Periodic Table of Elements (think back to high school science class). The food chemist, from China, ran her hands over the chart, pausing at different chemicals just long enough to say how a nanoized version of each would improve existing flavors or create new ones.

One of the marketing guys questioned what would happen if the consumer found out.

The flavorist asked whether the Food and Drug Administration would even allow nanoingredients.

The FDA would not permit me to interview anyone on the record about its efforts to regulate the safety of food products and packing that involves nanomaterial.

–Andrew Schneider