I spent nearly a decade leading FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. That role convinced me that food safety and nutrition are interdependent in so many ways, and if we want to make our population healthier, we need to support both.
… [R]ecord numbers of cases of cyclosporiasis have driven that message home broadly, including to consumers. FDA is currently investigating six cyclospora outbreaks, only one of which is currently linked to shredded iceberg lettuce.
Fresh fruits and vegetables, which nutritionists have been promoting for decades, are especially vulnerable to cyclospora contamination. …
What do these higher-risk foods all have in common? As a group, they are recommended as part of a healthy dietary pattern, and are certainly among the “real foods” being promoted by the administration for better nutrition and chronic disease risk reduction.
… Over the past 18 months, the administration has focused on chemicals rather than microbes in foods and has taken numerous steps that actively undermine microbial food safety ….
Related on the SLP
… Consumers should not be faced with a trade-off between nutrition and food safety — health is made possible when food safety supports consumer confidence in fruits and vegetables. “Real foods” are vulnerable to real pathogens.
