Is There Any Food That We Can Eat?

The recent case of salmonella poisoning in raw tomatoes has caused me to write this post.

Many fast food restaurants, with McDonalds leading the way, have removed raw tomatoes from their menu. The same goes for other restaurants. Now it's hitting the banquet departments. At work it’s a real pain in the butt since the chef has to modify some dishes that we serve. They don’t want to do it but it they don’t, the wacky customers say “is that a chopped-up tomato in that dish or a red pepper” or some other stupid comment like that. And don't ask the waiters what's in the food because they sure don't know.

The industry-standard tomato and mozzarella platter is a big no-no. Customers are calling to change their menus for events that are weeks or even months away.

Two years ago, when we had the problem with spinach, it was the same thing. Almost everyone that saw a green leaf on a plate asked if it was spinach. We even had to stop using arugula since it looks the same as spinach. Most of the customers didn’t know what arugula was anyway.

Before that there was bad beef (mad cow disease), bad chicken in China (I think they killed almost every poor chicken in the country), diet sodas were bad for you (aspartame), and mercury in fish.

We have a better chance of getting struck by lightening than getting sick, or killed, by any of these food items. You also have a better chance of falling in the bathtub and cracking your skull open than dying from a spinach leaf!

The same people that worry about this and go out of their way to make sure they don’t eat anything that may be contaminated don’t seem to worry too much about some other very dangerous things. Such as;

•Having a “few beers” after work then driving home.
• Not wearing their seat belts.
• Get out of the car to video tape a huge bear that is being fed by the person in the next car (remember the video from Faces of Death?)
• The “lion tamer” that sticks his head in the open jaws of a lion (“he’s a tame lion” he says).
• Having sex with the person you just met at the bar last night (a few too many beers I guess).
• Talking on the phone, putting on your make-up, listening to music, and eating an Egg Mc Muffin while driving to work.

…funny how most of these have to do with cars.

Anyway, that’s not even counting the crap we used to do in high school or college.

Listen; as long as we take reasonable care in all we do, usually everything will be fine. If not, well there’s nothing we can do to change it regardless. So relax…

Just don’t give us banquet managers any more grief about the “contaminated food of the week” or better yet, peanut allergies.

…that’s a story for another day.

P.S. Don’t those peanut allergy, lactose intolerant, gluten-free, sauce on the side, health-freak vegans drive you crazy!!!

I need a REAL job…

Read about some more stupid things people do at Darwin Awards.com



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