Food Poisoning

Food Poisoning

(Disclosure:  This is a public health themed post, repeated from the 2012 A-Z Challenge.  It’s as relevant today as it was a year ago, and so I believe it warrants a re-run.)

 It’s a special event and you and your spouse head to a favorite restaurant to celebrate.  You get a great booth next to the window with the scenic view.  The menu is filled with tantalizing items---you each order an entrée and the salad bar.

When you’re at the salad bar, you’re impressed with all the choices available---from cut vegetables and fruits, to nuts and toppings, and several different salad dressing choices.  You load up your plate and head back to your table to enjoy your meal. 

And you do enjoy your meal.  The food tastes good; there’s lots of laughter and good feelings going on around the table and you both enjoy the celebration.

However, later that evening, your spouse starts complaining about a stomach ache.  You’re not feeling too well yourself.  And within the hour, you’re both experiencing projectile vomiting and worse and your evening is now ruined. 

You were just poisoned by the food in your favorite restaurant.  Not intentionally, of course, but from this point forward, you’re never going to feel quite the same about the place. 

Does it surprise you to hear that the biggest food safety problem we consumers face is at the salad bar?  Even though the food supply in the United States is one of the safest in the world, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year, 76 million people get sick, more than 325,000 are hospitalized, and 5,000 Americans die from foodborne illness. Preventing foodborne illness and death remains a major public health challenge. 

The culprit in most foodborne illnesses is bacteria.  Bacteria are everywhere and they grow on food, doubling every 20 minutes!  They do particularly well in foods that are high in protein such as milk, meat, fish, or eggs and food with high water content such as fruit and melons.  Freezing, refrigerating, and drying foods do not kill the bacteria—it just keeps them in a dormant state.  When you thaw the food or remove it from the refrigerator, the bacteria continue to grow and reproduce.

Cooking food products to their required temperatures will kill the bacteria and render it harmless.  However, when the bacteria grow, they produce toxins and you cannot inactivate the toxins with heat or cold.  That means that any food that smells off or feels slimy cannot be fixed under any circumstance and needs to be thrown out!  If in doubt, throw it out. 

Safe food handling practices, cooking temperatures, proper refrigeration, and proper hygiene are all key to avoiding foodborne illness.  The website http://www.foodsafety.gov  is a good resource for consumer advice on food safety.   

Embracing Dog Hair

Embracing Dog Hair

Continuing with yesterday’s theme, dog hair is part of life with a dog, particularly breeds with double coats.  If you can’t deal a with a little dog hair, perhaps a dog isn’t the animal companion for you.

I’ve found that dealing with dog hair just basically requires an attitude adjustment.  Dog hair is a given, so deal with it.  Sure, the black hair clings to my light-colored pants, and the tan hair clings to the black pants, and I’m fine with the notion that no outfit is complete without a few dog hairs.  In fact, some people have actually MADE garments from their dog's hair, having collected the shedded hair, cleaned it, spun it into yarn and knit it up into leg warmers, scarves, and even sweaters!  I admit to having toyed with this idea but abandoned it after trying to find a place to store the third trash bag of hair.

From my perspective, dogs are worth every single hair that falls off their bodies.  Who greets you as enthusiastically as your dog when you return home?  Who loves you completely and unconditionally when you do something wrong or stupid?  Who is there by your side when you are sad or lonely or scared?  For many folks, the answer is their dog.

My attitude:  don’t hate the dog hair, figure out how to embrace it.  This is just not a fight you’re going to win, so figure out how to live with it.  Love your dog with all your heart and don’t sweat the small stuff.   Learn to enjoy vacuuming, and appreciate the workout you get pushing that machine around your floors every day.  It’s the best investment you’ll make.

Dog Hair

Dog Hair

I am a dog fan.   The unconditional love, loyalty, and friendship that come with dog companionship are hard to beat.  Along with that, though, comes dog hair which is going to fall out.  After all, shedding is a natural process that allows the new coat to come in. 

The German Shedder---er, Shepherd Dog is known for shedding LOTS of hair, second only to Malamutes.   German Shepherds have a double coat—the outer layer sheds all year round while the under coat molts twice a year.  The volume of hair that comes out during the molting periods is really quite impressive! 

There are three stages of hair growth and shedding:  Anagen (when the follicle is producing new hair), Catagen (hair growth is in a transitional phase), and Telogan (the hair is in its final position and stops growing).  Dog hair goes through these stages constantly, so you can expect continuous shedding.

Regular grooming and vacuuming can help keep the dog hair under control.  Some folks vacuum their dogs as well as their carpets and floors, but do so with caution as some vacuums, particularly Dyson models, have pretty powerful suction.  Dog hair is a fact of life with dogs, and you can either brush or comb it out and toss it in the trash, or you can let it fall out naturally all over your house.  Your choice!

Cat Purrs

Cat Purrs

I am a cat fan.  Except for a few short periods, there’s always been a cat in my life, oftentimes several.  Each of them has had their distinct, delightful personality.  I love the cat’s independent spirit and the softness of their fur, however, the most wonderful attribute a cat possesses is its purr. 

The purr.  What an incredible sound, unique to the feline. Both domesticated and wild cats purr, yet no other animals create such a sound. It can be loud and rumbling or soft and barely perceptible.  A purr most often communicates contentment but has also been documented when the cat is hungry, sick, or, inexplicably, about to die.

The origin of the purr within a cat’s body has been widely debated, and I’m not convinced the answer has been found.  Current thinking among researchers is that purring is actually caused by rapid vibrations in the muscles of the larynx and the diaphragm working in sequence.  First the larynx muscle vibrates and once it finishes, the diaphragm muscle vibrates.  Back and forth they go, at the rate of 30 times per second.  The result of these vibrations is air turbulence which is the sound you hear.  The muscle vibrations are what you feel when your hand is on your cat while it is purring. 

Maybe, maybe not.  I’m not sure I want to have the mystery of the cat’s purr resolved.  I just love feeling the wonderment of this amazing, unique sound as it lulls me to sleep at night.

Bees

Bees

I’m not really a bee fan, I must admit. My encounters with them have been largely unpleasant and the few times I’ve been stung, the physiological reaction has been more intense with each subsequent sting.  While I’m probably not totally allergic to bee venom, I’m certainly sensitive to it.

So for a while there it was war between me and the bees.  Didn’t matter if they were honeybees, wasps, hornets, or bumble bees, I used whatever means available to remove individual bees permanently from my immediate environment.

A few years ago I learned that honeybees were experiencing a die-off, with pesticides at the source of the problem. The culprits are seemingly the neonicotinoids that act on the bee’s central nervous system.  The pesticides accumulate in soil and plants and bees get exposed through residues in nectar and pollen or contaminated soil.  Suddenly all the adult honeybees in a colony disappear or die.

This colony collapse disorder impacts the nation’s biggest pollination event—that of California’s almond orchards. California grows ~80% of the world’s almond supply and it takes an ever increasing number of honeybees to do that job.  Each February, approximately 1.5 million bee hives are trucked to California from the Mid-West—where the neonicotinoids are used widely.  Several European countries have banned or limited the use of these chemicals in an effort to protect honeybees; this has not yet happened in the United States.

So I am changing my personal war on bees.  I carefully remove the honeybees that land in the pool so they can resume their flight when their wings dry.  I shoo those that fly into the house back out instead of grabbing the fly swatter.  I distract my dog when I see she is chasing after bees.  Small efforts to be sure, though I feel I must do my personal part while the federal regulators and courts wrangle over the pesticide issues.   

Arlee Bird—Founder of the A-Z Blogging Challenge

What better way to start off the 2013 A-Z Blogging Challenge than to say “hooray and thanks!” to Arlee Bird.  2012 was my first year doing the Challenge and I’m returning, after addressing some ambivalent feelings (see below).  What a great idea he conceived, and judging from the many hundreds of people who participate, I’m clearly not alone with that notion.  Thank you, Arlee!

Ambivalence

Webster’s dictionary defines ambivalence as “simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings”.

That’s certainly what I felt as the 2013 A-Z Challenge sign-up window drew near.  I participated in the 2012 A-Z Challenge—successfully—but it was indeed challenging at times to post a blog worth reading every day, and I did fall behind at work because of the time I instead invested on the Challenge.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to put myself through that again.

This year won’t be much different—the Challenge competes with another conference; I haven’t yet identified topics for each letter, let alone pre-write many of them.  For a couple of days in April, I won’t even have an internet connection.

Then I thought about what was great from last year’s Challenge.  I did it!—and met a goal I’d set for myself.  I did it with the unwavering support of my sister—love you, Lanie!  (http://www.spontaneoussputterings.blogspot.com)   And I connected with a handful of people, many of whom will do the 2013 A-Z Challenge, whose blogs I bookmarked and followed in the interim.  I found stitchers, dog lovers, and IT technicians— interesting people with interesting things to say.  I find myself looking forward to catching back up with them.

I faced my ambivalence and made a choice among those contradictory feelings.   I will give the 2013 Challenge my best effort. 

Thank you for visiting and please come back!

 Getting Back Into the Swing of Blogging

I’ve decided to accept the A-Z Challenge again for 2013.  It’s been a good 10 months since I last posted a blog, so this is a test blog to refresh my memory about composition and posting details, and to confirm that I’ve turned off the word verification feature from the comment section.

At this point I have not selected a theme for my blog.  As with last year’s challenge, I expect to tap into my interests for content including nature, needlework, music, public health, science, and the antics of my animal family.  I will do my best to make your visit to my blog worthwhile.

Thank you for visiting…if you’re a 2013 A to Z Challenge participant, all the best to you!  And if you’re not, consider joining the fun!