Left Over, Cut Onions Become Toxic - Facts Analysis

Story:

Please remember it is dangerous to cut onions and try to use it to cook the next day. It becomes highly poisonous for even a single night and creates toxic bacteria which may cause adverse stomach infections because of excess bile secretions and even food poisoning.




Other Version:

Onions! I had never heard this!!!

In 1919 when the flu killed 40 million people there was this Doctor that visited the many farmers to see if he could help them combat the flu...Many of the farmers and their families had contracted it and many died.

The doctor came upon this one farmer and to his surprise, everyone was very healthy. When the doctor asked what the farmer was doing that was different the wife replied that she had placed an unpeeled onion in a dish in the rooms of the home. It obviously absorbed the bacteria, therefore, keeping the family healthy.

LEFT OVER ONIONS ARE POISONOUS

Sometimes when we have stomach problems we don't know what to blame. Maybe it's the onions that are to blame. Onions absorb bacteria is the reason they are so good at preventing us from getting colds and flu and is the very reason we shouldn't eat an onion that has been sitting for a time after it has been cut open.

Onions are a huge magnet for bacteria, especially uncooked onions. You should never plan to keep a portion of a sliced onion.. He says it's not even safe if you put it in a zip-lock bag and put it in your refrigerator.It is dangerous to cut an onion and try to use it to cook the next day, it becomes highly poisonous.

Please pass this on to all you love and care about.


Hoax or Fact:
Hoax.

The message claims that left over, cut onions should not be used the next day, because they become highly poisonous because of bacteria growth, turn toxic and lead to adverse stomach infections. The message is not a fact, there is no scientific evidence to prove this claim.

Onions as such do not have any special property to magically attract bacteria from its surroundings. In fact, when onions are cut, they emits sulfenic acids which inhibit the growth of germs and thereby protect them from surrounding bacteria. This is because bacteria generally like moist and neutral environments, and they cannot stand acidic environments - that's why vinegar is used for preserving. Left over, cut onions are not poisonous, they are fine to use and can be stored in a refrigerator, in a sealed container at the proper temperature of 40°F or below for up to 4 days. You can also store them safely in zippered bags and use them within a day or two. But onions can lose their nutrient value when stored over a period of time.
However, it is also important to note that onions have to be handled in hygienic manner while cutting and re-using them, because they can be contaminated with certain bacteria when they come in contact with dirty hands or unhygienic cutting board, and consumption of such onions can indeed make a person sick. But again, this is possible with any other food item, not onions in particular.

Therefore, the message saying cut onions become toxic is a hoax, left over, cut onions are not poisonous, they are safe to use when stored in hygienic conditions. There have been many other versions of this story, claiming that leaving onions around a room will absorb the flu virus along with bacteria causing other illnesses and will prevent people from becoming sick. It is a fact that onions were used in folk medicine long before 1919, but it is just a false belief, there is no scientific evidence to prove it. Onions are not bacteria magnets, they are good to use, especially because they are high in vitamin C and are a good source of fiber and other important nutrients.

source: www.wisethinks.com

Food poisoning downs over 100 Ateneo de Davao students, officials

DAVAO CITY, Philippines - More than a hundred students of the Ateneo de Davao University (ADDU) were rushed to the hospital two hours after taking spoiled lunch on Sunday.

The students were attending the student leaders gathering—called Sui Generis—with ADDU President Fr. Joel Tabora.

Mureene Ann Villamor, chair of the student council Samahan, said the participants started to get sick around 3 p.m., a couple of hours after taking a pack of chicken adobo, pancit (noodles) and buco salad.

Villamor, who herself was rushed to the hospital after feeling nauseated and vomiting several times, said the chicken adobo “smelled terrible.”

“It did not smell good,” Villamor told Interaksyon.com in a phone interview. She was still confined at the hospital as of this writing.

“At around 3 p.m., may mga lumabas na sa session hall. Kasi nagsuka suka na. They were not feeling well already. I felt sick as I was facilitating at the open forum. I went to the toilet and found out that many students were indeed sick. They called 911 na,” Villamor said.

Father Tabora was reportedly sick himself and was brought to the hospital, Villamor said.

More than 50 students were brought to the Davao Doctors Hospital while almost the same number were also rushed to San Pedro Hospital.

Atenews, the official students publication of ADDU, posted a photo of the reported spoiled chicken adobo served to the students. Student Ricky Zonio said he was among those who felt ill after taking lunch.

“It was really shocking. Until now, throat still hurts because of vomiting. I nearly passed out,” Zonio said in the vernacular.

Edward Lactaoen, associate editor of Atenews, said he was able to talk to one of the doctors who told him that the “symptoms indeed point to food poisoning.” He, too, said a school official has told him that “they're awaiting lab tests on the food served during the event to identify what specifically it was that caused it.”

“Some of our staffers are at the hospitals,” he said.

source: interaksyon.com

Cuban doctors battle to control cholera outbreak

Manzanillo, Cuba (CNN) -- At first the Cuban doctors thought they were dealing with an outbreak of food poisoning.

The patients that arrived for treatment in mid-June at hospitals in Manzanillo had all gone to the same birthday party held at a house in the hilly countryside on the perimeter of the eastern Cuban city.

The sick had eaten shrimp at the party and doctors thought that meal might be the cause for the patients' heavy vomiting and diarrhea.

Then more people began walking into hospitals with similar symptoms.

But they had not attended the party.

"They started coming in a few at a time," said Julio Cesar Fonseca Rivero, the director of the Celia Sanchez Manduley Hospital, the largest in the region. "The first day five came, and then eight. That's not normal, that five people would come with the same symptoms. The most critical days were when there were 30 to 32 patients who arrived in a single day."

A sudden spike in cases of diarrhea is not unusual for Manzanillo's hospitals that treat the surrounding rural communities. There residents often live without indoor plumbing and in the summer months endure the scorching heat and heavy rains.

Illness kills three in eastern Cuba

This summer had already been particularly hot with heavy rains that caused outhouses to flood into several drinking wells.

Still, doctors suspected they were dealing with something they hadn't seen before.

"We became alarmed with the number of cases arriving. We usually see one or two cases of diarrhea each day," said Dr. Oyantis Matos Zamora, who oversees a clinic on the edge of the city that attends to rural residents.

The symptoms some patients exhibited -- the rapid onset of watery diarrhea and dehydration — had also not been seen in generations.

"The way that the outbreak developed and the appearance of other similar cases in the region, we realized this was a problem of a different magnitude," said Dr. Manuel Santin Peña, Cuba's national director of epidemiology.

The "problem" was cholera.

Cuba's last cholera outbreak occurred over a century ago. Although eradicated in many countries, the disease, according to the World Health Organization, still infects between 3 million and 5 million people each year, killing between 100,000 and 120,000.

In Manzanillo the outbreak has taken on a name of its own. There it's simply referred to by residents as "el evento."

So far "el evento" has taken three lives and infected at least 110 people, said Santin. He said doctors were waiting on test results for tens of other possible cases but said so far fewer than 30% percent of suspected cases had been shown to be cholera.

He denied reports that the Cuban government has underreported the death toll or that the outbreak is spreading to other provinces.

He said a handful of suspected cases had been identified elsewhere in the country. But he said those cases had come from the same region where the original outbreak took place and are believed to have been infected there.

"We can categorically say that there is no other outbreak in any other province," Santin told CNN, outside the entrance to the Celia Sanchez Manduley Hospital, where three more people had arrived suffering from severe diarrhea.

Cuban health officials allowed a CNN crew to be the first media to film in the hospital and speak with doctors there about the ongoing effort to control the cholera outbreak.

To combat the outbreak, the local government has closed 12 contaminated wells around Manzanillo, Santin said. Clean water is being trucked in for residents until a different source of water can be found.

At the entrances to hospitals and government buildings in the city stand buckets for people to wash their hands and soles of their shoes with chlorine bleach.

Kiosks throughout Manzanillo that sell milkshakes, iced drinks or other foods that come into contact with water have been shuttered.

A temporary ban has also been issued for fishing and bathing in waters off the coast that may be contaminated.

While in the rest of the country little has been said in the official press about the cholera, in Granma province, the site of the outbreak, residents are now shown a nightly program on how to prevent infection.

Santin told CNN those efforts appear to be working and that doctors are seeing a decline in the rate of infection. The perception that the outbreak was increasing, he said, came from the seven to 10 days it takes for Cuba's labs to return results of tests on the infected.

"The number of cases is dropping," he said. "That doesn't make us confident so much as make us work to intensify all our preventive measures so that in the next few weeks we can stop the outbreak."

Maria Rosa Rodriguez has seen up close what cholera can do.

The Manzanillo schoolteacher was hospitalized for a week with cholera and only recently was allowed return home to finish her recovery. She winced as she recounted the agony that the infection caused her.

"You're very nervous because we had never seen this before here," Rodriguez said. "You're feeling bad with diarrhea, vomiting and you lose weight very quickly. You think the worst."

source: CNN

KFC guilty in Australia salmonella brain damage case

Sydney -- An Australian girl who suffered severe brain damage and was left paralysed by food poisoning won a court case against fast food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken, in a judgment published Saturday.

Monika Samaan was seven years old when she suffered salmonella encephalopathy -- a brain injury linked to food poisoning that also left her with a blood infection and septic shock -- in October 2005.

Several other family members also fell ill and they claimed Samaan's injuries, which include severe cognitive, motor and speech impairment and spastic quadriplegia were caused by a KFC chicken Twister wrap.

She went into a coma in hospital and was so ill last rites were given.

The Supreme Court ruled in the family's favour, finding that her sickness was caused by "a KFC Twister... consumed predominately by Monika and in lesser quantities by her family."

Justice Stephen Rothman said the chicken became contaminated "because of the failure of one or more employees of KFC" to follow proper preparation rules, which he described as "negligent".

"There is some evidence, which I accept, that some employees were unaware of the full consequences of a breakdown in the system that was to be implemented," Rothman said in his judgment.

"Nevertheless, the conduct of the employee was negligent and KFC, as the employer, is vicariously liable for the negligence."

An internal review of standards at the store in the months before Samaan's illess assessed them at "breakdown" level, with particular criticism of hygiene and food preparation, Rothman said.

Though compensation will be determined in a separate hearing Rothman described the now wheelchair-bound Samaan's injuries as being of a type and severity that were "most rare".

"She is now intellectually disabled, is unable to function independently, she needs total care and she will be unable to live a life filled with normal activities, relationships, milestones and achievements," he said.

"The plaintiff has been severely disabled at a very young age and as a result of her injuries, it is clear she will never enjoy the normal life that was expected of her prior to this catastrophic event."

KFC said it would appeal the decision.

"We believe the evidence showed KFC did not cause this tragedy and, after reviewing the judgment and seeking further advice from our lawyers, we have decided to appeal Justice Rothman's decision," said KFC Australia spokeswoman Sally Glover.

"We feel deeply for Monika and the Samaan family however we also have a responsibility to defend KFC's reputation as a provider of safe, high quality food."

source: interaksyon.com