Courtesy of Flickr user doc18

…and why it’s bad to eat certain shrimp and fish:

This week is Food Undressed week. Elderly and infants have the weakest immune systems to deal with food-borne illnesses AND rarely have any control over the food they consume. This is scary to me, yet what is even scarier is the people who DO have control over what they eat very often have little knowledge.

If you are going to eat it, you should know about it.

According to CDC estimates, each year close to 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths result from food-borne illnesses. Most Americans consume nearly 63 pounds of High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) from drinks annually and three-quarters of our intake of sodium comes from processed foods – and these are considering the choices that are in our control.

Courtesy of Flickr user doc18

Now imagine factoring in the risks applied when dealing with fast food, low-quality safety checks at factories, and contamination of fresh produce (which seem to be increasing). I have a hard time believing that people want to eat poisonous or harmful things. There is nothing more valuable to one’s life than their health. With the economy still unstable and families even more dependent on income, a potential health issue with an income-earner could be financially catastrophic.

Most of our Twitter retweets this week are related to quick short food facts. Some readers have mentioned enjoying our “naked food” series. Our goal here is to make everything easier for the consumer: dealing with companies, getting issues resolved, and being healthy. We are here to support the consumer and help businesses do the right thing. Sometimes lethal mistakes are made because food production companies are too large, or their technologies are not updated enough. Our purpose here is to ensure word spreads quickly online when there is an issue and hopefully even faster before there is an issue.

As a female, I know that what I eat today will affect the family I have tomorrow. My own food habits (even small like using olive oil instead of margarine) are traits that I will carry into motherhood. A huge part of our own family history and traditions revolve around food – isn’t health something that you want to pass on to your kids?

Have you been too busy this week to catch all that has been going on? There’s still time to learn! Read one of this week’s articles outlining several pressing food issues:

This article is part of ConsumerBell’s Food Undressed week, detailing healthy, socially, and environmentally-responsible eating habits and food safety.

 

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