Author: Alicia Maroney

The Rise of Home Freeze-Drying: Safety Risks of DIY Candy, Eggs, and Camping Meals Home freeze-dryers are suddenly everywhere. Influencers post glossy reels of crunchy, shelf-stable strawberries and moon-cheese-style candy. Preppers extol multi-year storable breakfasts. Small bakers and cottage-food entrepreneurs advertise crunchy freeze-dried cookie dough and powdered cake mixes. The gadget’s appeal is obvious: it removes water while keeping shape and flavor, producing lightweight foods ideal for snacking, storage, or outdoor adventures. That appeal hides real safety caveats. Freeze-drying removes moisture but does not reliably kill bacteria, spores, or viruses. Low water activity preserves organisms in a dormant state, ready…

Salad Kits and Ready-to-Eat Vegetables: Why Listeria Is Increasing in Bagged Produce Bagged salad kits and ready-to-eat (RTE) leafy greens rewired how people eat produce. Convenience, long shelf life, and pre-washed “ready to toss” convenience helped these products become ubiquitous in grocery aisles. That same convenience creates unusual food-safety challenges. Listeria monocytogenes, a bacterium that can survive and even grow at refrigeration temperatures, has repeatedly turned up in RTE produce, triggered recalls and sickened vulnerable people. Recent outbreak investigations and recall actions show the problem is not random; the combination of postharvest handling, processing environments, and product format make bagged…

Food Fraud: Counterfeit Spices, Honey, and Olive Oil Carry More Than Economic Risks When shoppers think about food fraud, they usually imagine economic tricks: expensive olive oil labeled as “extra virgin” when it is not, honey diluted with sugar syrups, or saffron bulked out with cheaper threads. Those scams cost consumers and honest producers billions of dollars worldwide. The public-health danger is less obvious but just as real. Fraudulent or adulterated spices, honey, and olive oil have repeatedly carried biological and chemical contaminants, from Salmonella hiding in dried spices to lead and cadmium in cheap oils, that can make people…

Holiday Catering: How One Mistake Can Spark a Major Outbreak Holiday parties, office banquets, and family gatherings depend on caterers to deliver safe, delicious food at scale. Catering that feeds dozens or hundreds introduces operational complexity far beyond a home kitchen. Those complexities matter because a single slip, slow cooling, an underpowered warmer, a cross-contamination event, or a lapse in hand hygiene, can turn a festive banquet into a mass-illness incident. Why Catered Holiday Events Are Uniquely Vulnerable Catered events combine several risk multipliers: Case Studies: How One Mistake Became Many Sick People North Carolina Catered Thanksgiving Luncheon (2015) Investigators…

Preventing Foodborne Illnesses in Airports and Airplanes During the Holiday Season How travelers, airports, airlines, and caterers can keep festive travel from turning into a public-health problem The holiday season concentrates travel, crowds, and hurried food service into a short period. Long security lines, packed gate areas, and routes crowded with pop-up vendors create more opportunities for sloppy food handling, temperature lapses, and cross-contamination. Airplanes and airports are complicated food systems: food is prepared in off-site kitchens, transported, stored in constrained galleys, reheated in limited equipment, and handed out from carts in a moving cabin. That chain creates many potential…

Health officials and federal agencies have escalated their response to a multistate cluster of infant botulism after laboratory and epidemiologic evidence pointed to powdered infant formula as a likely vehicle. Public-health investigators in the U.S., led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), are working with state partners to confirm case counts, sequence isolates, test product lots, and trace distribution pathways as quickly as possible. What’s New (latest developments) Federal and state public-health agencies now say that epidemiologic and laboratory evidence links ByHeart Whole Nutrition powdered infant formula to a…

Supreme Deli LLC Voluntarily Recalls Boar’s Head Pecorino Romano Cheese Because of Possible Listeria Contamination Supreme Service Solutions LLC, doing business as Supreme Deli, is assisting in a voluntary recall of specific Boar’s Head Pecorino Romano cheese products after the supplier Ambriola Company notified customers and regulators of the potential presence of Listeria monocytogenes in select Pecorino Romano lots. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration posted the company announcement and product photos to help consumers and retailers identify recalled packages. What Was Recalled and How To Identify Affected Product The recall is limited to particular SKUs of Pecorino Romano cheese…

Leftover Safety After Holiday Meals Holiday meals are built around abundance. Big roasts, overflowing side dishes, and more desserts than you can finish are part of the ritual. The good news is that most leftovers are safe when handled correctly. The bad news is that a few small mistakes – leaving a casserole on the counter too long, failing to cool a giant pot quickly, or reheating unevenly – are common and can turn a festive meal into a trip to the doctor. The Core Rules In One Sentence Handle leftovers quickly, cool them rapidly, store them cold, reheat to…