Grocery Shopping Tips

Protecting yourself and those that share your  household  from food-borne illness begins with careful grocery shopping.  The U.S. government urges consumers to take these precautions:

• Shop only in stores that look and smell clean.

• Shop for items that are not refrigerated or frozen first.  Put perishables and frozen foods into your cart last. 

Shrimps have been in the news lately because of a disease called EMS (early mortality syndrome).  It's a killer disease, but, thankfully, the pathogen that causes it (just recently identified) rarely affects humans.  Still, the whole matter is significant because, among other reasons, Americans love shrimp.  We eat more of it than any other seafood, about 4.2 lbs. per capita annually, about twice the amount we were eating in the 1990s. Therefore, we need answers to these questions: 1) Are shrimps good, healthful food?  2) Are retail prices for shrimp going to zoom up because our supply of imported shrimp is down?  and 3) What should shoppers know about selecting shrimps in the grocery store?  4) How should consumers handle these fragile creatures?