Thursday, September 21, 2006
Well It's News to me..
The other night I sat down to have a nice evening meal with my family; unaware of the Ecoli monster that had swept into the Salinas county. The meal for the night was Raviolis with spinach and cheese. To join it, were green beans and fluffy white rice. For all who do not know spinach is one of my favorite things to eat. After all, I am a vegetarian. After feeling full and content, I decided to watch the 10 o'clock news before going to bed. The very first story was that of the outbreak of Ecoli in Salinas/Monterey area. Millions of dollars worth of spinach was being thrown away because of Ecoli. The reporter warned not to eat spinach, cooked or uncooked. "If you have it, throw it out," he blurted. My stomach immediately dropped to my feet. Hadn't I just eaten spinach for dinner? All of a sudden i started feeling nauseous. Uh, oh did I get Ecoli? The next morning I woke up perfectly normal. I had comletely forgotten all about the terror of Ecoli. That is until I went to MCOM 72, the topic happened to News. The Ecoli spinach story was brought up once again, and my stomach began to feel dips and churns of knots being tightly wound inside. I whispered to a friend next to me, and told him that I had eaten spinach the night before. We exchaged a giggle, but underneath I still felt the worried emotions. In the evening, I talked to my mom about the outbreak in spinach. Her reply was, "Oh, yeah that's been going on for weeks." Wow, I hardly listen to the news, and the one time I do, it happens to be a little too late. "Wait, a minute don't you realize that we ate spinach last night?" I said. "Oh, yeah don't worry about it Nicole; you'll be fine," my mom said confidently. Well, today is the third day since I've eaten spinach, and still there is no overwhelming symptoms of Ecoli in my system. So, what's news to me, may not be news to others, but the moral of the story is: pay attention to the news.
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2 comments:
I'm assuming you're OK?
Doesn't the process of cooking kill e-coli bacteria? I imagine in ravioli, unless you made them by hand, first the spinach would have been cooked in the process of making the stuffing, then it was stuffed into the ravioli, and then you cooked the ravioli.
If that's true — that cooking it makes it safe — then are the news media being fair and accurate in their reporting of this issue, or are they just employing the propaganda technique of persuading through fear?
I think those raviolis were made before the faulty spinach outbreak...I hope so! Anyways, the media always makes such a big deal about EVERYTHING. Even though ecoli invading our spinach supply is big news, it's the fact that nothing else of great importance was going on during the time of this story that the media felt it was important to make a HUGE deal out of this. I always worry when I watch a show or read the internet and it talks about illnesses. If it gives symptoms, I suddenly begin to have whatever it is you feel in wake of the illness...hypercondriac? VERY much so:)
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