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Comment by MangoToupe | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry, what's confusing about this take? All raw produce has the risk of infectious disease. Have you seriously never heard of food-born illness? Here's one example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2025/07/03/blueber...

Basically anything you put into a salad is better off in a soup or stew, or heavily treated with such low-ph liquid (e.g. salsa, pickled veggies, etc) as to remove the risk. If it isn't suited for canning, I'm not going to eat it.

Perhaps in a country with better-regulated food production it would seem more reasonable.

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There were 19 deaths in the US blamed on food-borne illnesses from leafy green vegetables in the 40 years from 1973 to 2012 [1]. If you’re avoiding salad out of safety concerns I hope you never go anywhere near any motorized vehicle.

If it’s an excuse not to eat salads because you don’t like them then fine, but maybe just own your food preferences instead of grossly exaggerating the dangers.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4591532/

In general your point’s fine but…

There’s likely multiple orders of magnitude difference between the numbers that “were reported” as part of a known outbreak vs the number of associated deaths that actually took place. People often get admitted without identification of what specific food caused them issues.

Further there’s reasons to avoid things that don’t result in deaths. “Each year in the United States an estimated 9 million people get sick, 56,000 are hospitalized, and 1,300 die of a foodborne disease caused by known pathogens.”

So their salad avoidance isn’t as extreme a reaction as you’re suggesting.

I don't think it's irrational to try and avoid listeria.

Cooking changes the nutrient profile of ingredients. So eating some raw ingredients makes it much easier to get some vitamins like C which rabidly break down at high temperatures.

If your that concerned consider keeping some raw foods like oranges, bananas, pomegranate, onions etc which involve removing pealing the outer layer before consumption.

Nobody thinks twice in Europe about eating any raw vegetable, fruit, eggs, heck even raw fish or beef in carpaccio.

You are claiming some negligible risk from food poisoning that is in some level present in every country globally, and you are not incorrect. But with such mindset, world is such a very dangerous place that it isn't worth discovering it. Which would be a grave mistake, life is too short and you would miss most of the 'juice' life offers, which never comes without objective risks.

> Nobody thinks twice in Europe about eating any raw vegetable, fruit, eggs, heck even raw fish or beef in carpaccio.

This is one of the weirder “everybody/nobody in Europe does x” claims I’ve seen. There’s no way you know what the fast majority of Europeans think and I know many Europeans who absolutely do avoid eating raw eggs.

If it doesn't kill ya, it only makes you stronger!

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