These days it seems salmonella goes with processed food like peanut butter goes with jelly, or hot goes with spicy, or flowers go with spring... It just seems inevitable that if we are buying food that has been handled or manipulated in any way prior to packaging, that sure enough you are playing Russian roulette with your health... your life for that matter!
The latest headline reads, "Shelled pecans recalled over salmonella fears", and it's just another example of the governments (FDA) incompetence when it comes to, well, doing their job; keeping our food supply safe.
When people think of processed food, shelled nuts usually don't come to mind, but shelling is no doubt a "process" that an otherwise healthy food undertakes. On that same note when people think of nuts they tend to focus on the actual nut inside and not the outer shell, but nature put that outer shell there for a reason; to keep the food inside fresh and the nutrients intact. Just like a fruit or vegetable begins to lose its nutrients once it has been peeled and chopped into those nice "ready to eat" size portions, nuts beans and grains do the same.
A nut with the shell can last years, but once that shell is removed so goes that shelf-life. And let's not forget about nutrients; a nut shelled right before eating it has more nutrients than a nut shelled at some processing plant months before. As for salmonella, you don't have to worry about a salmonella tainted nut if its shell is still intact.
So the choice is yours... Eat minimally processed organic whole foods and be healthy, or eat non-organic overly processed foods and add salmonella poisoning to any already long list of unwanted side-effects (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer).
No comments:
Post a Comment