Ten Common Food Poisoning Risks

Ten Common Food Poisoning Risks
By Tara Parker-Pope

Victoria Atencio
blog #2


I found this article in the New York Times and the purpose is to announce the top ten 'riskiest' foods that a person is likely to eat according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. In the article the first sentence that is presented is somewhat intimidating and I assume is meant to capture the reader's attention. The sentence includes statistics gathered from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which states that approximately 76 million people in the US get sick from the food that they eat and that 5,000 people die from the same cause. A brief explanation is given which explains that food borne illnesses are caused by bacteria found any where from the slaughter house to even your home. The article lists the top ten most common sources of food borne bacteria overseen by the Food and Administration (does not include meat which is overseen by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture).

This is an example of control in a couple of ways. The first type of control is from the purpose of this study by the CSPI because generating a list of foods that pose a possible risk is essentially saying either watch out when eating these foods or don't eat them at all. The second form of control is presented through the media, who without the ability of communicating with the public, would most likely never know that ice cream made the top ten food poisoning risks. I would be interested to see the percentages of sales if this article was more widely read. My guess is that the sales of these products would decrease. This is frequently seen with other products such as when the media reports of possible e. coli poisoning in spinach and all of a sudden people stop eating it for months. This shows the type of social control the media has on our everyday lives. If it wasn't for the media people would eat potentially harmful foods without any concern rather than giving up certain foods because they have been labeled by the government as posing a risk to your health. This can either be a good form of control or bad depending on whether or not you like living on the edge and want to eat what may or may not be a bacteria poisoned bowl of ice cream.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/top-10-food-poisoning-risks/?em