It’s no fun to wake up with a sore throat or blocked sinuses.  Maybe you head to the doctor, and maybe you don’t.  Knowing whether the illness is caused by a bacterium or a virus can help you understand possible treatment options. A bacterium — more commonly seen written in its plural form, bacteria – is a microscopic, single-celled […]

Fingers crossed, the weather will continue to warm and more and more people can get out into their gardens.  If you garden in a community space, it will seem different this year.  An earlier update shared information on community gardening this summer.  In the community where I garden, we’ve installed foot-operated hand washing stations with […]

The Partnership for Food Safety Education lists four basic steps to help prevent foodborne illness: Clean, Cook, Chill and Separate.  These food safety steps are important because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that foodborne microorganisms are responsible for 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths in the United States every year! Not only can you get sick […]

Research to be published in the September 2020 issue of Food Control confirms that consumers are wasting food due to confusion over food product dating.  An online survey of 1042 U.S. adults evaluated consumers’ use and knowledge of food label dates, and consumers’ habits related to disposing of food that would likely still be safe for consumption. The age […]

Studies have shown that the virus that causes COVID-19 can survive on surfaces for up to several days.  Is this cause for concern?  A recent study from the National Institute of Health noted that under laboratory conditions, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is stable for several hours to days in aerosols and on surfaces.  Scientists found that SARS-CoV-2 was […]

The coronavirus that we are all dealing with this year has some startling differences and also some similarities from other viruses that we have heard about before.  About 15-30% of common colds every year are caused by a type of coronavirus.  COVID-19 is a disease caused by a particularly virulent and contagious coronavirus. What is a […]

The CDC estimates that 48 million Americans every year get sick with a foodborne illness, with cases of foodborne illness tending to spike in the summer.  While grilling outside with our family can be fun, it can also lead to food poisoning.  Now is certainly no time to get sick with an illness that is avoidable!  […]

We know that the coronavirus is a respiratory illness, not a foodborne illness.  We also know that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends two primary strategies to help control COVID-19: physical distancing and hand washing.  So why are we seeing people wearing face masks? The CDC advises the use of simple cloth face coverings to slow the spread of […]