Bill Marler is a food safety lawyer who has spent 30 years defending victims of poisonings from pathogens such as E. coli bacteria, salmonella, listeria and others.
He is featured in the new Netflix documentary Poisoned: the dirty truth about your food, which started out as a book based on Marler’s first major legal case.
The expert spoke to the BBC about foods to avoid to prevent poisoning.
Life was going well for Stephanie Ingberg, a 17-year-old who was with her parents on vacation in the Dominican Republic.
Before flying, she said she felt ‘sick to her stomach’, but didn’t pay much attention to it and felt somewhat better when she arrived on the island. But during the night she got worse again and ended up in the hospital.
The next morning, he did not recognize his mother, his kidneys had stopped working, his brain was swollen and he was having seizures.
His parents coordinated an emergency medical evacuation to the U.S., where they confirmed that he had a serious E. coli bacterial infection. Her condition continued to worsen, she fell into a coma and a priest came to give her extreme unction.
Stephanie is one of the main characters in the Netflix documentary, which takes a look at how hygiene failures in our food chain can have truly disastrous consequences for consumers.
As the priest began his prayer, Stephanie opened her eyes. She would survive but suffer lifelong consequences.
“I have to take medication every day to try to strengthen the filters in my kidneys,” she recounts in the documentary. “There is a possibility that I will require a kidney transplant and have to do dialysis for the rest of my life. You never want to hear something like that.”
“I ate a salad and now I have health effects for the rest of my life.”
Stephanie is one of the 600 million people who, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), get sick each year from contaminated food. Fortunately, she was not one of the 420,000 who die.
Checking what you eat could save your life. According to Bill Marler, these are the foods you should avoid in order to stay healthy.
Unpasteurized milk or juice
The experience Marler has gained through litigation has led him to forgo products containing unpasteurized milk or unpasteurized juices.
The risk is in catching the same E. coli bacteria that made Stephanie so sick.
“Any health benefits that unpasteurized milk may have are simply not worth it. People have forgotten about the diseases that existed in the 19th century,” says Marler.
Raw sprouts
Marler also does not eat raw sprouts such as alfalfa, soybeans, clover or bean sprouts.
These foods have been linked to some of the worst cases of food poisoning in the world. In 2011, an outbreak linked to fenugreek seeds caused 900 people to develop liver failure and there were more than 50 deaths.
“Seeds become contaminated when they grow outside. When you bring them inside and put them in a nice water bath to germinate, you give them the perfect medium for bacterial germination,” Marler says.
“I don’t know a single person in the food safety industry who eats raw sprouts.”
Uncooked meat
With ground meat, any bacteria on the surface of the meat will have mixed with the inside. That’s why it’s so important to cook burgers well.
And you wouldn’t need a lot of bacteria to make you seriously ill.
“About 50 E. coli bacteria are enough to kill you; you can fit 100,000 on the head of a pin. It’s not something you can see, taste or smell. The only safe way is to cook all the meat thoroughly,” says Marler.
He recommends that you insist that your burger be cooked to an internal temperature of 155ºF (69ºC) to eliminate any pathogens.
When it comes to cuts of meat, there is usually less risk because bacteria on the outside die off during the cooking process.
Pre-washed and pre-cooked fruits and vegetables
“When you eat a hamburger, the most dangerous part is not the hamburger itself, but the lettuce, onion and tomato,” says Mansour Samadpour, a food safety consultant, in the Netflix documentary.
In 2006, there was a large outbreak of E.coli linked to spinach: more than 200 people became ill and up to five lost their lives in the U.S. Marler represented most of those affected.
The bacterial contamination was traced to a spinach farm in California that had some form of animal intrusion. The feces had contaminated the spinach with E.coli.
When they were cut and sent to the factory where they were washed three times, the bacteria dispersed among the stock and spread across the country, sickening hundreds of people.
“Is it worth the risk of more people handling your lettuce just for the convenience of not having to wash it? If more people touch it and it gets contaminated, it spreads pretty quickly,” Marler says.
Raw or undercooked eggs
The danger with eggs comes from possible infection with salmonella, a common bacterium that can cause diarrhea, fever, vomiting and stomach pain. Those very young or very old can become seriously ill or even die from infection with this bacterium.
There have been many disastrous incidents involving eggs in recent history: in 1988 fears of a possible salmonella outbreak led the British government to order the slaughter of two million chickens. A similar case in 2010 led to some 500 million eggs being recalled in the US.
Marler says that while today’s eggs may be safer than eggs of yesteryear, caution should still be exercised and warns that salmonella still poses an unacceptable risk to consumers of raw or undercooked eggs.
“One in 10,000 eggs has salmonella inside the shell. The hen can develop salmonella in the ovary, it gets into the egg and the only thing you can do is cook it.”
Raw seafood
The risk with oysters and other shellfish is that they are filter feeders. That means that if there is a bacterial or viral infection in the water, it will likely get into the food chain easily.
Marler believes the problem is being exacerbated by global warming.
“With warmer oceans comes an increase in oyster-related contamination events: hepatitis, norovirus, etc. I’m from Seattle, and some of the best oysters in the world come from the northwest U.S., but clearly there are problems with our water quality and water temperature. It’s a new risk factor you have to be aware of when you’re ordering those raw oysters,” he says.
Packaged sandwiches
“You should check the dates on those sandwiches carefully, and hopefully consume food that you either prepare yourself or that is prepared in front of you,” advises Marler.
He warns that the age of the sandwich is the biggest risk factor, something that could lead to exposure to listeria monocytogenes, a dangerous bacteria.
He says it is one of the big killers both in the U.S. and around the world, and sends almost anyone who ingests it to the hospital.
“Listeria grows very well in refrigerator temperatures, so if someone makes you a sandwich and you eat it almost immediately, the risk of listeria is low. If they make it and it sits in the fridge for a week before you eat it, it will give the listeria bug a chance to grow in a sufficient amount to make you sick,” he says.
How safe is sushi
One type of food that people are often skeptical about, sushi, doesn’t worry Marler as much, although he admits you have to be careful where you buy it.
“I go more often to a good sushi restaurant than a steakhouse. The risk of contamination from the fish is not as high,” he says.
“I don’t buy sushi from the corner store or a gas station. A good sushi restaurant is pretty safe, as the fish has a low risk as far as bacterial infections are concerned. It’s a risk profile I’m more comfortable with,” he says.