

Leafy Greens Top Risky Food List - cwan
http://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100246094&GT1=31036

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billswift
"The 10 types of foods included in the list account for nearly 40 percent of
all foodborne illness outbreaks linked to FDA-regulated foods since 1990"

"50,000 illnesses were linked to these 10 foods"

50 000 * 2.5 = 125 000 illnesses (125 000 * 40% = 50 000)

125 000 / 19 years = 6580 illnesses per year

6580 illnesses and a population of 300 million means that there will be 1case
of reported food-borne illness for every 45 000 people in a year. Compared to
how many cases I remember from when I was a teenager in the 1970s, this is
incredibly few.

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DanielStraight
Also important, the number of people affected by unhealthy diet will be
substantially higher. This is why they say there are three types of lies:
lies, damn lies, and statistics. Risky foods, to me, are ones that are likely
to give you a heart attack when you're 35. Ones that give you a 1:45000 chance
of illness (to say nothing of serious complications) are quite safe.

Not to mention, we aren't exactly comparing apples to apples here. Leafy
greens covers a heck of a lot more individual food items than oysters.

It just goes to show that you should never, ever take statistics at face
value.

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mhb
50,000 illnesses/250,000,000 people/9 years = 0.00002 illnesses per person per
year.

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decultured
Thank you. This is a major problem with how media portrays data in news
stories. Most people would see 50k over 9 years as a huge number, but if it
were instead presented as an individual having a %0.002 chance of getting ill
from these foods, or as about %0.0022 of the population is affected per year,
the story takes on new meaning. Understanding how to present data like this
should be required learning for journalists.

Of course there is always the chance that this is deliberate, and done to make
the story more sensationalistic, but I prefer to follow Hanlon's Razor: "Never
attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

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Tichy
Is that because of the alibi green stuff that gets slapped on burgers?

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derobert
No, it's basically a list of foods commonly consumed raw. The chicken was far
more likely to make you sick when consumed raw, but the salmonella died
somewhere around 150°F.

