Comments on: You Don't Poop Where You Eat

You Don't Poop Where You Eat

SansPoint — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:05:46 -0800

Taco Bell E. Coli Out break from... green onions? This is the second major outbreak of E. Coli from vegetables this year. Where does E. Coli come from? "One of the root words of the family's scientific name, "enteric", refers to the intestine, and is often used synonymously with 'fecal'."

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:06:57 -0800

Still, one of soul music's greatest instrumentals.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:13:23 -0800

I always figured Booker T & the MG's were behind this.

By: StrasbourgSecaucus

StrasbourgSecaucus — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:13:24 -0800

booker t is hot even if he gives me explosive diarrhea.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:15:24 -0800

Taco Bell recently got rid of trans fats, this will overshadow it, even though trans fats cause a lot more damage.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:17:29 -0800

Well people don't go to Taco Bell to give their digestive systems a break, do they? I always thought the purpose of that chain was that it would let you experience Montezuma's Revenge without leaving the comfort of your home.

By: mcstayinskool

mcstayinskool — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:24:25 -0800

Indeed, clevershark. After being doubled over for most of the afternoon following my last Taco Bell experience, I have instituted a "No Taco Bell Ever Ever Ever Again" policy that has been a great success.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:25:34 -0800

I remember there was another Tex-Mex chain that killed a few people with tainted green onions a few years back. Around Philadelphia, I think. Remind me?

By: daninnj

daninnj — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:31:05 -0800

Chi Chi's? It had a Hepatisis outbreak.

By: amro

amro — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:31:13 -0800

Faint of Butt: I think you're thinking of the hepatitis outbreak at Chi-Chi's restaurants a few years ago.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:34:12 -0800

And its already been traced back to a California farm. Luckily for me, I don't eat fast food anymore, or I haven't for almost four months (except for that one moment of weakness earlier this week and that was Wendy's anyway because I like fingers in my chili).

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:34:27 -0800

That's it, thanks.

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:39:29 -0800

Moral of the story: Stop eating vegetables.

By: condour75

condour75 — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:51:01 -0800

Well sure clevershark, but we taco bell fans expect our dysentery and/or cholera to come from tainted meat. This whole vegetable thing has the stink of heavy-duty O. Henry class irony.

By: davy

davy — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:55:00 -0800

Don't eat raw vegetables at fast food joints then. I've never had a McDonald's salad.

By: Meatbomb

Meatbomb — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:56:29 -0800

Moral of the story: don't eat poop.

By: StrasbourgSecaucus

StrasbourgSecaucus — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:58:52 -0800

By: pax digita

pax digita — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:01:07 -0800

Dang. I likes me Taco Bell hard-shelled tacos supreme. Or should I say, liked. Sigh. I hate feeling like I'm rolling the dice every time I want to pig out.

By: jefgodesky

jefgodesky — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:10:52 -0800

Irrigation. Take a look at what's going on along the Colorado River, and remember that most of our vegetables are grown on huge, unsustainable, highly concentrated, monocultured farms that rely heavily on such irrigation, and it's not hard to figure out why everything has E. coli all of a sudden. This isn't a question of cleaning your vegetables; this is being absorbed into the plant itself. This is the direct result of our reliance on an industrial agricultural system.

By: antifuse

antifuse — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:17:27 -0800

Mmmmm... intestinal bacterial goodness. Man, I haven't cleaned out the pipes in years! I need to find me a Taco Bell.

By: malaprohibita

malaprohibita — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:17:46 -0800

My best friend just got food poisoning from a Taco Bell.... Yikes!

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:21:31 -0800

I used to like the occasional cheap midnight eats at the Bell. And then some years back something in the taste just sorta changed. I couldn't even stomach a basic bean burrito anymore. Around that time I heard that corn for non-human consumption was found in the tortillas, and other such things. I just stopped eating the stuff at all. Good timing I s'pose. We should be an animal with sense enough to disregard our own feces (to quote Jules).

By: jefgodesky

jefgodesky — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:35:23 -0800

Eating at a fast food chain or not doesn't make much of a difference when the source of the contamination is the fact that nearly all of the nation's vegetables are grown in the same concentrated area, fed by the same dirty irrigation water.

By: The Confessor

The Confessor — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:35:38 -0800

Odd. Infections propagated by restaurant food are obviously more notorious because a greater number of people are likely to be exposed to the tainted source, but is the restaurant supply chain objectively less secure than the grocery chain?

By: selfmedicating

selfmedicating — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:46:20 -0800

There was a problem with e.coli in green onions at a Chi-Chi's restaurant near Pittsburgh, PA, in 2003. And the problem isn't the restaurant or the grocery store, it's the farm. There are cows nearby. Cows poop. Sometimes we see these outbreaks because of accidental contamination, or maybe because contaminated poop is used as fertilizer (as noted in jefgodesky's rather disturbing link)

By: hermitosis

hermitosis — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:52:09 -0800

I congratulate Taco Bell on their cute tailwind marketing tie-in to the "Fast Food Nation" movie!

By: davy

davy — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 09:02:59 -0800

Last night I raided the refrigerator for two carrots and a celery stalk -- that I was too tired and hungry to wash first. Should I now consider this act appallingly stupid or even an unconscious suicide attempt? By the way, about 10 years ago I read in a syndicated column, whose name and byline I can't recall now or I'd simply link to it, that that covering the surface of the water with a layer or two of toilet paper cuts down on splashback, a phenomenon I find really yucky (especially when I've already pissed into it). There's just something about knowing I have smelly bacteria on the outside of my butt, on the skin of my buttcheeks themselves, that bothers me to think about; sometimes I miss my childhood days when I'd squat in somebody's bushes and squeeze out a loaf into their mulch, wiping my ass with whatever came to hand (including in one case a sock I then told my mother I'd lost), because it felt so much cleaner that way, cleaner and more natural too like a creature of the forest (perhaps one of what the World Book Encyclopedia called "Woodland Indians" which after all comprises about one-eighth of my genetic material). Now I realize that according to Leviticus I should have carried a garden trowel with which to bury my fecal matter, but in my own defense I must say that I had but six years at the time and my theological studies had not yet finished with the Miracle of the Loaves And Fishes. (Were I to go fuck myself I'd want an enema and a shower first, and plenty of hand sanitizer.)

By: davy

davy — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 09:05:27 -0800

"MeTa."

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 09:22:07 -0800

Other uses of green onions in 'Mexican'-type fast-food and family-style restaurants.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 11:11:46 -0800

"My friends all got food poisoning at Taco Bell, and all I got was this lousy vomit-soaked T-Shirt"

By: ninjew

ninjew — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 11:36:29 -0800

Someone gets a raving case of diarrhea from eating a $.89 taco. Film at 11.

By: mrbill

mrbill — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 11:43:50 -0800

The wife and I figured that Taco Bells are going to be the cleanest restaraunt around for the next few weeks. Went there at 3am last night, no gastrointestinal problems so far.

By: Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 12:42:52 -0800

Something that no one seems to ever mention (or explain) in these discussions. It isn't E. coli that causes these issues. E. coli (for the most part) is not a pathogen. It is a symbiont organism that helps you digest your food, tends to keep less benign organisms from flourishing in your digestive tract and produces vitamin A. The problem child is the strain O157:H7 which produces a toxin similar to that of Shigella dysenteriae, from which it probably picked up the trick via a plasmid. The problem, for you and me at least, is that cattle and deer can have a gut full of the stuff and not be bothered. This is why ground beef used to be the most common vector. It has been demonstrated that soil mixed with manure can harbor O157 for the better part of a growing season and that about 13% of cattle, whether grass fed or lot fed, are carriers. Take home message: As far as E. coli infection goes, it doesn't matter how many times the guy at Taco Bell washes his hands.

By: darksasami

darksasami — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:36:50 -0800

I blame the Japanese. At least two anime series I have seen refer to the folk remedy of anal insertion of green onions to cure fever. So there you are.