Don't Invite This Guest to Your Next Barbecue

Imagine a company so secretive that the main guy in charge of keeping track of all the money has no idea who his boss is...

This company hails back to the horse-and-buggy days – the founder, Frank Brunckhorst, sold his wares out of his carriage in Brooklyn.

All that company secrecy hasn't stifled its success… Now, 120 years later, it's a $3 billion business with a brand name that every American knows for its lunchtime offerings. And, as it turns out, the still-family biz is notorious in the industry for having lots of secrets – so much so that the New York Times christened the privately held company as the "Jay Gatsby of the Meat Industry."

But this meat-industry icon business is finally out in the open as it recently gained notoriety for causing the deadliest outbreak of foodborne illness...

That company is Boar's Head, a big-name purveyor of deli meats which were unfortunately riddled with a hardy kind of bacteria that even thrive in the refrigerator, where the colder temperatures are supposed to slow down bacterial growth. As a result of last year's outbreak, 60 Americans were hospitalized with listeria, and 10 died.

And right now, we're in prime food-poisoning season...

Summertime picnics and family get-togethers are ripe with danger for food poisoning... where warm temperatures and lots of different hand-touching said foods set the stage for a bacterial population boom.

According to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 48 million Americans come down with food poisoning each year from eating contaminated food. Gastrointestinal intruders also land 128,000 folks in the hospital every year. Worse, about 3,000 end up dying.

The most vulnerable folks include very young kids and infants, adults aged 65 or older, and anyone with a weakened immune system. A startling 50% of older Americans who get sick from salmonella, listeria, E. coli, or campylobacter infections end up in the hospital. As for the biggest offender, norovirus takes top prize for being the most common cause of food poisoning in the U.S.

Symptoms like nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, diarrhea, weakness, fever, chills, and headache usually start from two to six hours after dining on the unfortunate dish. Some pathogens can cause symptoms to rear up in as little as a few hours. Others may take days – even weeks – to emerge.

And even if you don't die from a foodborne illness, you could end up permanently damaging your body in other ways...

Those outcomes range from kidney failure caused by E. coli... to painful arthritis due to salmonella... to neurological problems caused by your immune system attacking your nerves resulting from campylobacter infections.

But you can keep two simple acronyms in mind – CSCC and FFF – to foil the potential killer lurking in that potato salad...

Clean, Separate, Cook, and Chill ('CSCC')

• Clean: It goes without saying – wash your hands with soap and warm water. Clean the sink and counter space before washing fresh produce (including the bagged, "prewashed" stuff). Make sure to use cold water, though... Giving your veggies a hot spring bath can trigger the cells to absorb water – and any bad bugs. Use clean cooking utensils. And wipe down surfaces with a bleach-based solution to kill the particularly hardy norovirus.
• Separate: You've done your duty of washing your leafy greens to remove any, say, salmonella bugs. But chop up those leaves on a board smeared with juices from a raw chicken, and that bacterial ball could land back in your court thanks to cross-contamination.
• Cook: Get a food thermometer to be extra safe. Poultry should be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit, for instance.
• Chill: Don't leave out any perishable food for more than two hours – chuck it in the refrigerator. If the food is sitting out at, say, a picnic when it's 90 degrees outside, wait no longer than an hour before refrigerating. If you're thawing frozen meat, poultry, or seafood, do it in the fridge.

Fibrous and Fermented Foods ('FFF')

In the spirit of (hopefully) easy-to-remember mnemonics, here's my little acronym for fibrous and fermented foods. And you should strive to eat them every day.

That's because a healthy diet rich in both types of foods is key for a healthy gut... which very well may be your bulletproof vest against a nasty pathogen.

Loading up on fermented foods boosts the diversity of the population of microbes living in your gut. That's according to a December 2023 study published in Science... The more different kinds of bugs you have, the more likely one of them happens to prefer the same food as a pathogen. By gobbling up the food, that gut bug of yours prevents the bad bugs from growing their numbers.

The fiber you eat is like a meal from a Michelin-star restaurant for your gut bugs. In return for this premium feast, the bugs in your colon tip you in short-chain fatty acids, or "SCFAs." SCFAs are chemical byproducts of gut-bug fermentation. And they regulate how your neutrophils work.

(Neutrophils are a type of white blood cell. They're often referred to as the "first responders" of your immune system. That's because these cellular EMTs are one of the first immune cells to arrive at the scene of an injury or infection to your body's tissues.)

In fact, a November 2023 study found that compared with a low-fiber, high-sugar diet, a high-fiber, low-sugar diet was associated with greater inactivation numbers of the listeria-causing bug.

If you do come down with food poisoning, though...

• Get plenty of fluids.
• Get plenty of rest.
• Stick to easily digestible, bland, low-fat, and low-fiber foods once you're able to stomach them.
• Stick to clear liquids, though, if you can't keep anything down.
• Forgo taking meds like Imodium unless you're on your doctor's orders. That's because they'll slow down your body's effort to rid itself of the unwelcome intruder.
• For elderly loved ones in your life, keep a close eye on them for symptoms of severe dehydration like overall weakness, feeling very lethargic, dark urine or little-to-no urine output, dizziness, cramps, and confusion.

But once you've made a full recovery, you'll want to be proactive in rebuilding a healthy, balanced gut-bug population...

I love Greek yogurt for a protein-packed boost of beneficial bacteria. And I especially love cabbage in its sauerkraut and kimchi incarnations. Grab refrigerated sauerkraut that's labeled "raw," "unpasteurized," and/or "probiotic" to get the live goodies. The unrefrigerated, shelf-stable stuff still has lots of fiber, vitamins, and minerals... But it's otherwise a probiotic graveyard.

Finally, keep in mind that your intestinal assailant could very well be a stomach bug instead of food poisoning. While both maladies have symptoms like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach pain, there's a way to tell them apart...

It's likely food poisoning if your dinner companions also get felled by gastrointestinal symptoms. Vomiting and diarrhea usually kick in within just a few hours of eating contaminated food.

On the flipside, vomiting and diarrhea take longer to kick in if you've been bitten by the stomach bug.

Also, you're more likely to bounce back from food poisoning in a day or two, while a stomach bug can take longer than two days.

Either way, this summer, don't let a foodborne illness ruin your fun... Foil the enemy with a two-pronged defense: Block them with safe food-handling practices, and bolster your innate immune system while you're at it.

And speaking of summer, travel season is in full swing. Except this year, many Americans are reluctant to board a plane... due to the scary headlines about tragic aviation accidents that have peppered 2025 thus far.

Still, commercial flights are statistically safer than traveling on the road.

However, air passengers do face another danger. Few people think about it, but it kills far more people than plane crashes – especially among seniors. I talked about it in this month's Retirement Millionaire issue. Click here for a 30-day trial run if you're not already a subscriber.

What We're Reading...

• Mouse brains hint at why it's so hard to forget food poisoning.
• Something different: Why sea urchins like looking their best.

Here's to our health, wealth, and a great retirement,

Dr. David Eifrig and the Health & Wealth Bulletin Research Team
June 26, 2025