Killer Tomatoes...

Are you scared of the tomatoes in your refrigerator? Apparently, lots of fast food restaurants and industrial supermarkets are, after the recent salmonella outbreak. The truly scary part of this outbreak, is that the CDC hasn't been able to decipher its origin.

Although the origin of the outbreak has not been determined, the Food and Drug Administration has released a warning against raw red plum, red round and red Roma tomatoes from geographic areas it does not oversee.

After tracing the patterns of salmonella and looking at production and distribution pattern information, the FDA has compiled a list of areas not associated with the current outbreak.

The real kicker here, is that the FDA has compiled a "safe list," whereby a consumer can feel confident that the tomatoes are fine, which would be wonderful if it weren't for the industrial food change completely displacing the consumer's ability to make this judgment. My recommendation for those in the Madison area is to head to the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning and stop by Real Food, a Mennonite (or maybe another Anabaptist sect) ran operation out of central Wisconsin. They have some marvelous tomatoes that are "grown in real dirt," as the sign says. These outbreaks should be a wake up call that the industrial food chain is unnecessarily adding processing, packing and shipping steps to our food supply. Generally, the more steps involved, the more processing and treatment needed to keep the "food" fresh. Why do we have to make it so complicated? I am not sure, but it is probably something to do with our delusion that we can have cheap, healthy, fast, and safe food. There are obviously a number of balancing factors in weighing these variables against one another, but as the economists love to say -- "There is no such thing as a free lunch."