Until the other day, I never spent much time worrying about my lunch meat. I just assumed that a salami sandwich, while not necessarily healthy, probably was better for me than, say, 2-month-old milk or chicken tartare.
But then I saw a USA Today story warning that people over 50 and pregnant women could contract a life-threatening disease called listeriosis if they ate cold cuts that weren’t heated to 165 degrees. The risk, presumably, was even higher for people who are in both of those categories, although if you’re over 50 and pregnant, that’s probably pretty far down on your list of concerns.
The warning originally was sounded by the Center for Disease Control, but has been widely ignored. According to the CDC, there are 260 listeriosis-related deaths a year in this country, which may or may not be approximately the same number of deaths caused by people choking on the granola in their yogurt.
So now food-safety officials are getting serious.
“People at risk for listeriosis should not eat hot dogs, luncheon meats or deli meats unless they are reheated until steaming hot,” insists a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service. “If you cannot reheat these foods, do not eat them.”
Not all experts agree.
“I have patients that are 103, and they’re probably eating lunch meat every day,” notes the incoming president of the American Geriatrics Society. “But they’re survivors — lunch meat’s not going to get them.”
I’m with her.
Of course, I was raised as a daring eater. Breakfast at home was bacon and eggs with a glass of whole milk. The sandwich I carried to school (and left unrefrigerated in my locker until lunch period) was baloney with mayonnaise on white bread and a bag of potato chips, accompanied by a half-pint carton of chocolate milk purchased in the cafeteria. Dinner, if my stepfather had anything to do with it, was a slab of red meat, a pile of mashed potatoes with a chunk of butter melting into it and two glasses of whole milk. It’s probably a miracle I made it out of my teens.
So while I’m as concerned as the next guy about diseases I can’t pronounce, I think I’ll roll the dice and continue to eat my lunch meat cold.
Having to eat steaming hot cold cuts sounds like a bunch of baloney to me.
Contact D.L. Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com
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