Urgent Health Alert: FDA Issues Highest-Level Recall for Blueberries Amid Listeria Concerns

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Hey food safety advocates and health-conscious consumers!

We've got critical news you need to know regarding a recent food safety alert. The FDA has escalated its warning concerning certain blueberries to a Class I recall, the most severe risk level. This indicates a "reasonable probability" that consumption could lead to serious health issues or even death due to potential Listeria contamination.

What you need to know:

• The Recall: Alma Pak International LLC, a Georgia-based produce packer, initiated the recall last month after routine testing revealed Listeria monocytogenes in their finished product.

• Affected Product: Four hundred boxes, totaling 12,000 pounds of blueberries, were shipped to a single customer in North Carolina.

• The Danger: Listeria infection, or listeriosis, can cause severe flu-like symptoms. While healthy adults typically recover, the risk is significantly higher for vulnerable populations including pregnant women (potential for miscarriage, stillbirth), newborns, older adults, and individuals with weakened immune systems. For these groups, listeriosis can lead to life-threatening complications like
  meningitis or even death.

• Symptoms: Look out for initial flu-like symptoms such as fever, muscle aches, nausea, and headache. In severe cases, symptoms can progress to a stiff neck, confusion, balance issues, and seizures. Symptoms can appear days to weeks after exposure.

It's crucial to stay informed and vigilant about food recalls to protect yourself and your loved ones. While blueberries are generally low-risk for Listeria, this incident highlights the importance of heeding official health warnings.

For the full details and to stay updated on this urgent recall, please visit the original source:

Read the Full FDA Blueberry Recall Article Here

Stay safe and informed!

GMOs in Disguise: Exposing the Brands You Think You Know

Imagine looking at the clock and realizing it's an hour before dinner time and you haven't the slightest clue about what you'll make for dinner time and the natives are getting restless. You rush over to the pantry and give every shelf a quick scan. You see a few interesting things but nothing inspires you. As you stand there indecisive, time is steadily ticking away. You need to find something and you need to find it fast! Then suddenly, your eyes become fixed on a Taco Kit by Old El Paso, but this isn't any ol' taco kit. This is the Family Size box with 2 kits inside. We're talking 12 hard taco shells, and 10 flour tortillas. You sigh a sigh of relief as you realize you have all the other ingredients needed to make tonight a taco night. 

 

You look on the back of the taco kit box for the cooking instructions and something catches your eye. Right next to the cooking instructions is a small but puzzling sentence that reads, "Contains Bioengineered Food Ingredients". What the heck does that mean you wonder, but there's no time to investigate, you've got to get dinner ready before your family storms the kitchen like an angry mob with pitchforks and torches in hand. You finish dinner just in the nick of time and everyone fawns over you for saving the day with a delicious taco spread. You smile warmly but in the back of your mind, you're wondering what you just fed your family. 

 

Unfortunately, I experienced the above scenario, but I discovered the Old El Paso Taco Kits I used for months use bioengineered food ingredients. I found a few food items that had the same labeling which prompted me to see just how many items in my pantry were bioengineered. The shocking results are shared below, but first, what's all this bioengineered business, and is it the same as GMOs (genetically modified organisms)? 

 

Britannica online defines a Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) as an "organism whose genome has been engineered in the laboratory in order to favour the expression of desired physiological traits or the generation of desired biological products." In a nutshell, the desired attribute of one organism is manually introduced into another organism to give it the desired attribute. So for instance a crop like bell peppers which can not survive freezing temperatures is inserted with the genes of a cold water fish that can survive in freezing temps to create a crop of freeze-resistant bell peppers. 

 

Sounds strangely interesting yet frightening at the same time. I can recall years ago seeing a great debate a decade ago over whether or not food products containing GMOs should be labeled. As crazy as that sounds there was indeed a time when some powerful people didn't think GMO foods needed to be labeled, however, thankfully in 2016 Congress passed a law requiring the USDA to standardize how bioengineered foods would be labeled which led to the creation of the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard (NBFDS). According to the NBFDS bioengineered foods "…contain genetic material that has been modified through in vitro rDNA techniques and for which the modification could not otherwise be obtained through conventional breeding or found in nature." So whether you use the term genetically modified organisms (GMO), genetically engineered (GE), or bioengineered (BE) it all means the same thing, although there may be some differences between the methods used in each.

 

Did you know the first GMO was developed in 1973 when DNA was taken from one bacterium and inserted into another? Since then the technology has been used to develop everything from medicines to plant-based foods that "act" like animal-based foods, to drought-resistant crops, etc. The big question is whether or not GMOs in our food supply are safe. For every naysayer, there is an equal or greater group that says it's safe. The purpose of this blog entry is to share the brands I've personally encountered that use bio-engineered ingredients in their products, so if you want to avoid bio-engineered foods you will definitely want to see this shocking list.

 

Brands That Use Bioengineered Food, And The Products Containing Them