There are 1,700 confirmed cases across six provinces.
The chairperson of the ministry of health’s emergency and operations committee says lab results just back from Australia and Fiji indicate the presence of rotavirus in all patient samples.
Chris Becha says a tailored response strategy is being finalised and will be made public tomorrow.
Ben, 11 years ago, coaching with me at a rep tournament.
Ben, a couple of days ago at a rep tournament in DC.
Pay it forward or something, I guess.
On this day in 1923, Sam Phillips was born. With his Sun Records, he brought Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and B.B. King to us. Our first stop when we went to Memphis in 2008 on our way to IAFP in Florida.
When I had campylobacteriosis I didn’t want to move much for fear of unleashing what was in my bowels. According to Yahoo News, chickens infected with campy also move less.
Using cameras to track how the birds move around can predict which flocks are at risk of being infected, according to research by Oxford University.
Lead author of the study Dr Frances Colles, from Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, said: “Humans consume nearly 60 billion chickens a year, more than any other animal.
“At the same time, there is a worldwide epidemic of human gastroenteric disease caused by campylobacter.
“It is estimated that up to four fifths of this disease originates from contaminated chicken meat.”
The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, showed campylobacter-positive birds had less movement and different behaviour to those without the bacteria.
Professor Marian Dawkins, Professor of Animal Behaviour at Oxford University, said: “The findings are compatible with the growing evidence that campylobacter may be detrimental to chickens’ health, rather than simply being harmless gut bacteria.
“Use of this optical flow information has the potential to make a major impact on the management of commercial chicken flocks, for the benefit of producers, consumers and the birds themselves.”
Researchers collected data for 31 commercial broiler flocks and tested for the presence of campylobacter at different ages.
There are certain folks who are at higher risk for foodborne illness, the young, elderly, pregnant and immunocompromised.
Food safety is about making risk decisions. When it comes to my kids, who can’t really make salient risk/benefit decisions around food safety, I’m cautious. I don’t mess around with undercooked meats and temp everything.
Hope, faith, trust-based food safety is even riskier for those who are more susceptible to pathogens. Eating out is largely a trust-based activity; trust in the managers, food handlers and suppliers when it comes to keeping meals safe.
A San Diego man, who had a weakened immune system, died in 2014 following complications associated with Vibrio he got from an undercooked scallop dish in 2013, according to the Napa Valley Register.
Redd restaurant in Yountville is being sued for wrongful death by the family of a San Diego man who claimed to have suffered food poisoning attributable to scallops eaten as an appetizer and as an entree.
Larry Sacknoff, 61, died Aug. 16, 2014, due to complications caused by Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a bacteria found in estuarine or marine environments, according to court documents.
About a year earlier on July 21, 2013, Sacknoff enjoyed scallops at the Yountville restaurant, the suit alleges. He became ill with diarrhea, a symptom of Vibrio, and so did his friends, Mary and Scott Papas, who ate at Redd with him, according to the civil suit.
Sacknoff, a former television sportscaster in San Diego, had a history of heart problems and had recently undergone a heart transplant prior to visiting the restaurant. This caused him to have a compromised immune system and inhibited his ability to fight off infection, according to the complaint. “Larry’s fragile condition simply could not handle the aggressive Vibrio pathogen,” the family alleges.
He was treated in the San Diego area for the lingering effects of his infection between Aug. 2, 2013 and March 7, 2014, according to court documents. His treatment included several hospitalizations.
Redd Restaurant and Pierless Fish Corp., a scallop supplier based in Brooklyn, New York, were both named as defendants. In court papers, both denied all allegations.
A settlement with Pierless Fish Corp. was reached in September, and claims against the company were dismissed on Nov. 12, according to Pierless’ attorney Michael Burke with Vogl Meredith Burke LLP in San Francisco. Burke said the terms of the settlement are confidential.
In response to a complaint from Sacknoff’s family, Napa County’s environmental health division inspected the restaurant on Aug. 6, 2013.
Redd, which got a passing B grade, was found to be out of compliance in three food safety areas, including:
“Scallops prepared during this inspection were less than thoroughly cooked,” the inspector reported. Scallops were served between 108 and 132 degrees, failing to meet the 145-degree cooking requirement, according to the report.
The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages due to strict product liability, negligence, and breach of implied warranties. They also seek wrongful death damages and, in their complaint filed on July 16, 2015, demanded a jury trial.
A jury trial is scheduled for July 11.
We’re pretty good about sharing our kids’ hockey accomplishments on barfblog. Here’s another.
Our team of ten 7- and 8-year olds traveled to Laurel, MD to play in a tournament against youth hockey teams from Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.
After losing the first two games by a combined score of 35-6, the kids improved over their next two games winning the finale 14-4.
They also took home a team silver medal in the skills competition (where each team competed in skating and shooting events).
We don’t go out to eat much anymore. It’s too expensive, too much of a hassle, and maybe we’re too ugly.
Restaurants deliberately allocate their best tables to their most attractive diners, an investigation has found.
Models posing as customers for a TV documentary were given “golden tables” in three top restaurants.
But those considered less attractive were seated at the back near kitchens or toilets.
And two restaurateurs admitted it was common practice. TV chef Simon Rimmer owns Greens in Manchester and Earle in Cheshire (both in the UK).
He said: “Every restaurant has a golden table where they sit the best looking customers. A restaurant’s clientele give off a certain message about the place.
“Good looking customers attract more people and make you more cash so you sit them where they can be seen.”
Faith-based food safety has run its course. I’d be more interested in the bugs being served rather than where I was seated.
Neil Elkes of The Birmingham Mail writes that all restaurants, take aways, pubs and cafes should be forced by law to display their food hygiene ratings according to Birmingham’s licensing chief.
And if you don’t like it, the ghost of my great-great-great grandfather, William Perry, also known as the Tipton Slasher, will come and fight for mandatory display, just like he fought on the canals outside Birmingham for passage.
Currently food outlets can choose whether or not to display their ratings to customer and generally only those with four or five stars do.
But Barbara Dring, chairman of the council’s licensing and public protection committee, is urging the Government to make it compulsory for food sellers to display their rating.
She believes that by forcing venue to highlight their ratings will encourage the minority who are unsafe to raise their game.
The ratings of every outlet serving prepared food can be found on the Food Standards Agency website and last autumn they revealed that 127 places had been rated zero – the lowest score available meaning they are often filthy, have pest infestations or unsafe food.
Those venues are often closed and can only re-open once cleared by council inspectors. Repeat offenders are prosecuted .
Coun Dring (Lab, Oscott) said: “There are more than 7,500 food businesses in Birmingham and we want to them not only to be compliant with food law, but we want to encourage them to be better.
“One way to do this would be if it were a legal requirement to display their food business rating on their front door as they do in Wales.
“Currently the Food Standards Agency’s scores on the doors system is voluntary – there’s no incentive or compulsion for premises rated 0 or 1 to display their latest rating, so I want to see the Government make this a legal requirement for all food businesses.”
Thanks to an alert reader, I have the rebuttal to the Squatty Potty and its magical unicorn turds, via Skeptoid.com. Because we all care about poop.
The Squatty Potty is an invention by Robert Edwards; its express purpose to to improve the quality and ease of your bowel movements while on the toilet. It has a catchy name and is sold everywhere from Target to Amazon.com. The squatty potty is a stool that is designed to fit around the front of a standard toilet bowl, providing lift to your legs and resulting in a squatting-type position rather than sitting position while moving your bowels.
Among the Squatty Potty’s claims are these:
The modern day toilet is convenient, but has one major fault; it requires us to sit. While sitting to do our business may be considered “civilized”, studies show the natural squat position improves our ability to eliminate.
[…]
The puborectalis muscle creates a natural kink to help maintain continence. Squatty Potty relaxes this muscle for fast, easy elimination.
The marketing declares that sitting on the toilet is not as beneficial or effective as squatting. Since this is an obvious naturalistic fallacy, we have the refreshing twist of a new device intended to make one more “natural.” This is common in marketing, where one often sees the equation of “natural=good,” with total disregard for reality. The Squatty Potty is a simple yet interesting device with a catchy name. The marketing is what draws my skeptical eye. They make very specific claims about the research and anatomical benefit—testable claims. Let’s take a close look at the research and find out if the claims are full of it.
The first thing any good skeptic should do when faced with a marketing claim is evaluate the plausibility of the claim. Low plausibility means that claims require more rigorous proof. The Squatty Potty actually scores pretty high on the plausibility scale. The position that the device places you in is a very plausible mechanism for easier stooling.
Raising your legs can be a mechanism to improve your bowel movements. This is irrelevant to the claimed colon-kinking anatomical issue. When you bear down on the toilet, you are performing what’s called a Valsalva maneuver. You are forcing expiration against either a closed glottis, or contracting strongly your thoracic and abdominal muscles increasing intra-abdominal pressure. Similar changes can also occur when a person lifts a heavy weight while holding their breath. Sitting in any squat-type position while bearing down is likely to increase that intra-abdominal pressure, resulting in a more effortless bowel movement. Although this is not the claim in the marketing, the Squatty Potty has a very plausible mechanism to improve the ease of bowel movements.
What about the other claims? Namely that it produces an anatomically improved position and produces a “cleaner colon.” These things are easy to claim and hard to prove. The Squatty Potty is not the first product to claim this benefit. It is a smaller and cheaper version of other squat-position devices, such as the Lilipad and the Nature’s Platform. There are others. Basically they all make the same claims. The Squatty potty claims that it has developed a sweet spot (pun intended) of not too much sitting, not to much squatting.
The website lists several research papers supporting their position:
The first is a Japanese study, “The Influence of Body Position on Defecation in Humans.” It is a small-scale, six-person, uncontrolled study. Sure, I buy it as research, but it is a index study. It limits include tiny non-heterogenous (one male, five female) cohort, with no controls and without blinding. Interestingly, full squat is considered the best, which is not the Squatty Potty position. It doesn’t support the claim that Squatty Potty’s squat is better than a full squat.
The next study has my favorite title of the the group: “Impact of Ethnic Habits on Defecographic Measurements.” (As an aside, I think I need to add “defecographic measurements,” which means “poop X-ray study,” to my medical lexicon… but I digress.) This was a small study that used barium enemas and radiography to evaluate the anorectic opening in defecation.Imaging revealed that the rectal opening was measurable larger in a squatting position. But this study has two major issues. If you use a population that squats to move their bowels and then place them on a first-world toilet bowl, as was done here, you are disrupting their accustomed maneuver. You would need a control group of Europeans to do the same tests to realistically support superior evacuation. Plus moving your bowels is an activity that has deep social and cultural taboos associated with it. Making major changes may cause the participants to rush or change their normal structure. Imaging revealed that the rectal opening was measurable larger in a squatting position. Any of these factors can have a major impact upon on bowel evacuation.
The third research paper posted was “Comparison of Straining During Defecation in Three Positions.” It’s a larger study than the first, but it’s still very small. Researchers used a subjective questionnaire to have subjects rate straining. The findings were similar to the other studies: full squat results in the lowest straining.
Overall the research is flawed and not very compelling. It does have the upside of replications of results. Interestingly, the results do not support the website’s assertion that the Squatty Potty is superior to squatting fully. So I’m not really sure why the website lists this research as scientific evidence for their modified toilet stool.
Based on my reading of the research offered I would say the squatting is the most beneficial for anatomical opening. That is about all the research says. How suboptimal sitting and partial squatting is remains unclear. The study related to straining is too qualitative and small to make that distinction.
Overall, the direct claims The Squatty Potty specifically makes—such as “elevating your feet during elimination is healthier” and “primary (simple) constipation is a consequence of habitual bowel elimination on common toilet seats”—are unsupported by the research they provide.
This is where the Squatty claims are full of it, in my estimation. They cite figures such as these:
“4-10 million Americans have chronic constipation (defined as having a bowel movement less than three times per week), and as many as 63 million people are suffering at any time from occasional constipation.”
The real research is left out of the website’s facts page. Self-reported constipation in the United States and the United Kingdom is more prevalent in women, nonwhites, and those over age 60. And surveys of physician visits for constipation have also confirmed this, finding more visits by women, nonwhites, those with lower incomes, and patients with less than 12 years of education. After adjusting for these factors, it is more common in individuals with little daily physical activity, low income, and poor education.
The prevalence of chronic constipation rises with age, most dramatically in patients 65 years of age or older. In this older age group, approximately 26 percent of men and 34 percent of women complain of constipation. Constipation appears to correlate with decreased caloric intake in the elderly but not with either fluid or fiber intake.
The glaring omission by Squatty Potty here is the fact that constipation correlates with many issues. Yet none of them are position-related. So although the research they offer can suggest that squatting makes bowel movements easier it doesn’t automatically follow that sitting contributes to constipation.
Constipation is a complicated medical issue. There are a myriad of medical conditions, medications, and diseases that cause constipation. Constipation has too many variables to lock it down to a single vague, unproven supposition that your anatomy is interfering with your stooling. Your lower intestines are not a standpipe and fecal consistency is another variable. There is just no credible evidence that sitting is a problem. It may be dangerous to assume that sitting is a problem. Treating simple constipation with a stool may work but it could also be dangerous: you may miss a serious health issue early because you assume that your position is giving you constipation. That is not the only downside for using a toilet stool.
The Squatty Potty marketing gives the false impression that better bowel movements equates with better health. They are not alone; many alternative treatments tend to give the impression that our bowels are trying to kill us. Brian Dunning went over this in Skeptoid episode #83, “The Detoxification Myth.” There is no real evidence that better bowel movements equate with better health. There is no evidence that squatting produces a larger or more complete bowel movement. Even though the position may make an easier bowel movement, that doesn’t equate to bigger or healthier. Anyone who has had to undergo a colonoscopy will tell you that cleaning out your colon is fatiguing and undesirable. Medically speaking, bowel cleansing claims can be dangerous or nonsensical. Your colon is not the center of healthy living, and consequently cleansing is of marginal health benefit.
Overall I would say this about the Squatty Potty: on the positive side it almost certainly enhances your ability to bear down when you go. There is some replicated evidence that squatting does foster ease of going. As for the negatives, there is no evidence that it prevents or treats uncomplicated constipation. There’s no real evidence that anatomic position is a risk factor for constipation, and no real evidence that it is significantly different than other types of toilet squat devices. It leads you to believe that sitting is an impairment to normal bowel movements. That implied problem is not supported by the research and is unlikely, based on uneven distribution of constipation problems.
So why buy a Squatty Potty? I can’t say I think it’s worth it. Truthfully, it looks a little ridiculous, not that that means anything during a bowel movement. It really has no effect on other factors that impact constipation—diet, exercise, age and medical issues. I am uncertain that changing your position is enough of a benefit to help anyone suffering from chronic constipation. I can say that it is not dangerous and it may make it easier for you to bear down or reduce straining if you are constipated. It is just not reasonable to say that it has any significant effect on your overall bowel habits.
On the upside, Squatty Potty is relatively inexpensive, seems safe, and as long as you have a realistic view of the benefit I can see someone using it.
Two texts. That’s all it takes to avoid potential stomach pains in Evanston, Ill.
Or at least, that was the goal behind an endeavor that pairs the city’s restaurant inspection scores on Yelp with text message alerts for diners. When the SMS program launched early in 2015 it was a quiet release. In fact, Erika Storlie, Evanston’s deputy manager, described the undertaking as more of a four-month side project than anything else.
The city had just completed a project with Yelp to feed restaurant inspection scores to the review site and wanted to investigate joining the scores with its 311 non-emergency texting app. The problem was, Evanston’s 311 app required a person on the other end to retrieve or record data and submit replies.
“So then, that began the exploration of, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be cool if we could text the restaurant name to 311 and automatically get the inspection score back?’” Storlie said. “It kind of came from the fact we were using these two different types of technologies and we wanted to marry them.”
Whether it’s Evanston’s Kafein coffee house on Chicago Avenue or the Peckish Pig on Howard Street, finding scores is simple. Diners just text “food” to the city’s 311 number, and after a prompt, enter a restaurant name and they’re returned the recent score and inspection date.
It’s simple and much easier than Yelp’s mobile app, which compels users to tap and swipe their way to a restaurant’s “More Info” tab and deep dive through a list of miscellaneous information.
Since Yelp and the texting services launched, Evanston officials said there’s an interest in tracking how public scoring influences health inspections.
NPR reports the food-obsessed media landscape has proven fertile ground for word play. There are now new words to describe every food niche or gastronomical preference.
Can’t stand little kids running amok in your favorite Korean fusion restaurant? You might havebratophobia. And you could be a gastrosexual if you use your cooking prowess to attract that new special someone.
In his new book Eatymology, humorist and food writer Josh Friedland has collected many of these neologisms in a 21st-century food dictionary.
Friedland recently spoke with NPR’s Rachel Martin, host of Weekend Edition Sunday. Highlights from their conversation are excerpted below.
On the ‘sourdough hotel’
“So this is in Stockholm. There is a place, a bakery, where, you know, if you are devoted to keeping your own sourdough starter and feeding it every day with flour, if you need to go on vacation, you can leave your sourdough with this bakery. They’ll keep it on a shelf and feed it daily for you while you’re gone. It’s like boarding for your pet.
On ‘brogurt‘ — yogurt marketed to men
The one that did it was this company Powerful Yogurt. It’s on store shelves now, and they target – you know, it’s like marketing, like, an energy drink for guys.
On ‘blood cashews’
“This was based on a Human Rights Watch report on the way cashews are processed in Vietnam, which is one of the world’s biggest exporters of cashews. So it turns out that in Vietnam, people who are convicted for drug offenses are sent to drug treatment centers where they are basically forced labor for producing cashews, for processing them and getting them ready for export. And, you know, it borrows from this idea of blood diamonds, obviously. So yeah, no, the book blends the hilarious and the ridiculous and the quite serious.”