How to Serve Dips; Why Not to Serve Sprouts

Chances are your holiday party(ies) will begin with a beverage and a dip. Why not?  Dips are popular and delicious. However, they can also be an ideal way to spread disease.  Read on to learn why they're a health hazard and how you can serve them in a sanitary way.  What about sprouts in those ready-made sandwiches for your guests? Banish the sprouts.  They're so risky that some supermarkets have refused to sell them.  Detail about this below.

Dips

Health magazine, in an article about germ-spreading food habits, calls one of the bad habits "double-dipping." The phrase must refer to this situation: You dip your chip into the guacamole, bite off part of the chip, and then put the rest of it back into the bowl to scoop up more dip. Here's what researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina said about this practice: "Double-dipping is the bacterial equivalent of French-kissing everyone in the room."

Now suppose your party includes kids with dirty hands, which probably means all the kids in attendance.  If they're putting those grimy paws into the bowl of chips, they're spreading contamination, too. 

You can't police your guests to be sure they have clean hands and a mouth big enough to take in an entire chip in one bite.  But here are two suggestions from the Health article:

- Put a spoon inside the bowl of dip and little plates next to the bowl.  Guests will get the idea that they're supposed to put their portion on a plate and scoop from there, not put their chip(s) (and possibly their fingers) into the communal bowl.

- Create individual portions of dip in small paper cups, and stand sliced veggies and/or pretzel sticks in the dip. This strikes us as an especially good idea if your guests include kids, who are always about to come down with something contagious.

Sprouts

Since Shelf Life Advice has repeatedly talked about the dangers of sprouts, we were happy to come upon this good news on the website Food Safety Tech: As of October 22, 2012, Kroger and the 2,425 stores it operates in 31 states, announced that deliveries of sprouts into its distribution centers and stores were discontinued. The Kroger stores have also stopped selling other foods produced on the same equipment as sprouts. Kroger runs stores under the Kroger name and several other names including City Market. Dillons, Jay C, Food 4 Less, and Fred Meyer. 

Kroger is not the first company to ban sprouts.  Walmart made the same announcement in 2010.

What's given sprouts a bad reputation?  Tainted sprouts have been linked to at least 30 outbreaks of food-borne illness since 1996.  A 2011 European outbreak caused by sprouts sickened more than 4,000 people and killed 50. 

Why are sprouts such a risky food?  To grow, they need moisture and warmth, exactly the environment that bacteria thrive in.  Furthermore, pathogens often live inside their seeds, where they cannot be reached and killed or washed away. 

Is there any hope that sprouts will be able to redeem themselves? Payton Pruett, Kroger's vice-president of food safety, says Kroger might reconsider its policy when (according to the article) "newer technologies and practices show that farmers can consistently produce sprout seeds that do not internalize pathogens and when sprout-processing environments can be enhanced for safety and cleanliness."  Scientists at the Illinois Institute of Technology are coordinating efforts to help producers of sprouts identify best practices and learn how to apply them.  Meanwhile, the best practice for consumers is not to eat or serve any types of raw sprouts. 

Note: For more information about the health risks of eating sprouts, click here: http://shelflifeadvice.com/content/raw-sprouts-nutritious-and-dangerous 

Sources(s):

Health "America's Wildest Food Habits, Revealed" December 2012.

foodsafeetytechs.com "Kroger Stops Sprout Sales"

http://www.foodsafetytech.com/FoodSafetyTech/News/Kroger-Stops-Sprout-Sales--997.aspx