lettuce: Why should not stay out of the fridge at all and what should you watch

If you really like them, there’s something you should be careful about. There is a vegetable which is much more vulnerable to infection than a bacterium that causes severe food poisoning, compared to the other dark green, leafy vegetables, warn scientists from the US. This vegetable is , which easily develops coli when it remains at room temperature. The other dark green leafy vegetables, such as spinach, are more resistant to e. coli. E. coli is a dangerous bacterium. A species called STEC, because it produces a toxin known as Shiga, is the third most frequent cause of food poisoning in the European Union (EU). According to the STEC caused 8,565 cases in 2022. 14 incidents were reported in our country. STEC may cause abdominal cramps, abrupt onset of diarrhoea (often bleeding) and vomiting. In 5-10% of cases the infection from this causes a complication called uremic haemolytic syndrome. Patients are admitted to hospital for hospitalization because they are at increased risk of renal failure and other problems. 568 of European patients in 2022 experienced this syndrome. The 20 died because of him. Another eight patients resulted in other causes. Dangerous room temperature “At room temperature, e. coli does not grow rapidly in all vegetables, but mainly in lettuce,” said chief researcher Dr. Mengyi Dong, postdoctoral Food Safety researcher at Duke University, North Carolina. “But when placed in the refrigerator, at a temperature below 4 degrees Celsius, its bacterial load decreases rapidly”. The new findings were published in . As researchers explain, lettuce food poisoning is more common than with other similar vegetables. That is why they wanted to investigate what was happening. Thus, they contaminated the leaves of five different vegetables: lettuce, common lettuce, spinach, cabbage and brassica. Then they noticed what happened when the leaves were exposed to a temperature of 4, 20 and 37 degrees Celsius. The temperature of maintenance in a good refrigerator is around 4 degrees. 20 degrees is a relatively good home temperature in winter. 37 points means it’s too hot.