Since cheese is a mold, is mold on cheese bad to eat? GUEST BLOG

Today's blog is written by Miranda.

Depending on the type of cheese, the mold on cheese could be more or less dangerous. Hard cheese is dense and the mold most likely cannot penetrate into the cheese. The mold can easily be cut off. Cheese made with mold could be more hazardous to eat if it gets moldy. Mold that the cheese was not made with has a higher probability of being dangerous. Soft cheeses can easily have mold and bacteria growing together due to the moister content. The soft cheeses should be thrown out.

Source:http://www.ucop.edu/riskmgt/bsas/bsas_op/documents/molds_food_dangerous.pdf

Are All Animal Eggs Edible? GUEST BLOG

Today's blog is written by Miranda.

When thinking of eggs, one usually thinks of chicken eggs. Most commonly chicken, duck, and goose eggs are eaten. Fish eggs are eaten as a delicacy. Reptile eggs are not recommended to be eaten. They are edible but they have a high risk of bacteria.


Source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19679367

Do Plastic Water Bottles Kept in a Car Cause Cancer?

This topic has been circulating since 2007. According to the story, a woman was told by her doctor that her breast cancer was a result of drinking water from plastic bottles left in her car. Supposedly the heat facilitated the leaching of the plastic chemicals into the water and these chemicals led to breast cancer. This story was labeled a myth.

New research by Wagner and Oehlman (2009) found that mineral water packaged in plastic bottles (PET) did contain xenoestrogens which in part, did originate from the plastic packaging. However, the bottles were not heated so the effect of higher temperatures on the packaging was not a part of the study. According to the findings of this research, plastic bottles contain more chemicals that mimic estrogen than glass bottles. This still does not mean the levels are high enough to cause breast cancer.

Source: Environmental Science and Pollution Research May, 2009.

How Fast Can Bacteria Contaminate Dropped Food?

What you are asking about is fondly called the "Five Second Rule". Many children and adults live by this rule meaning if you drop food you have five seconds to pick it up before it becomes a home to dangerous bacteria.

Several experiments have been done in an attempt to validate or disprove this belief. Dawson et al. (2006) found that bacteria can be transferred to the food almost immediately. So, the research indicates that a shorter time on the floor does mean less bacteria but remember it takes less than 100 E Coli organisms to make you sick.

Best advice? Pick it up and toss it into the nearest trash receptacle.

Is Unpasteurized Milk Good For You?

Milk has been heated or pasteurized to kill bacteria since the process was developed by Louis Pasteur in 1864. Milk fresh from the cow (or sheep or goat) can contain E coli, Listeria or Salmonella which can cause diarrhea, abdominal pains, vomiting or worse. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cautions against drinking raw milk.

On the other side of the argument are people who believe raw milk contains immune enhancers that are otherwise destroyed by pasteurization. But even then they encourage buying full fat milk only from pasture fed cows.

Is Bottled Water Safe?

The safety of water bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) has been studied by several different groups. One German scientist has published a few studies on the safety of bottled water and found that the amount of antimony was higher in water bottled in PET bottles.

Other groups counter this by saying that the health risk from antimony oxide is very low.

For those of you who refill these PET bottles throughout the day - your risk may well be higher from the bacterial contamination than the antimony oxide.