That's Fit

Halloween is over. Thanksgiving is next. That means less talk about candy and more about the featured meat of the month: Turkey.

As you prepare for your Thanksgiving feast, don't neglect to cook your bird to the proper temperature. You'll need to invest in a food thermometer -- it's the only way to tell if your turkey has reached a temperature high enough to destroy illness-causing bacteria. And you'll need to cook that bird until it has an internal temperature of 165°F for safety, and 180°F for the best quality thigh meat. You'll want to check your temps at two spots -- the thickest part of the breast and the innermost part of the thigh. Check your stuffing too, and aim to cook it separately until it reaches 165°F internally.

For more on food safety, visit www.foodsafety.gov.

I try not to stress about whichever health panic is sweeping the world until it seems like there's a real reason to worry about it. SARS was a huge deal for a while but you don't hear much about it anymore, and while I'm sure contracting West Nile virus is no walk in the park, as far as I know there really hasn't been a huge number of people to come down with the illness so far.

Bird Flu isn't really very high on my list of illnesses to get concerned about either even after reading this piece. Apparently a study done at the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that a mutation in the virus has made it easier for the infection to survive in the human upper respiratory tract, which in turn, may make it spread more easily from person to person.

The article points out that Bird Flu is no where near the point where it could reach pandemic proportions but that that is definitely a possibility in the future. I figure I'll worry about that eventuality when it happens. What do you think?

The HN51 "bird flu" virus continues to make sporadic headlines across the globe, and in the latest installment, China said yesterday that its poultry was safe to eat amid a confirmed bird flu case in that country.

China's recent spate of food-related recalls has made many a global customer wary of the quality of food exported from that country, and a bird flu outbreak would be the negative icing on the cake if it spread outside the control of bird farm operators.

But, so far, this has not happened and that as a result of finding the HN51 virus recently, over 36,000 birds had been destroyed.

Do you trust chicken from China -- and do you know which chicken products you eat come from that country?

I haven't read much about the upcoming 2008 Olympics, and although it's good that they're preparing for the worst, I was surprised that some of the first of news I came across was about how Beijing is setting aside thousands of hospitals beds in case of an infectious disease outbreak. Not about swimmers or track runners, but the fear of a pandemic.

But this is a particularly big deal because China has a negative history surrounding the handling of infectious outbreaks in the past (i.e. SARS), so the fact that Beijing has made such an effort and reduced the reporting time for an outbreak from what used to be a week to as little as 10 hours is a good thing. China has also been making some positive moves in the fight against bird flu as well.

So, fun or not, positive moves like this should get press too.

Why on earth would Japanese officials want to burn over 10,000 chickens anyway? Well, the authorities started the process after the chickens were found to have the bird flu or were culled at the farm they started dying in. A broad subtype of the bird flu known as H5 is the culprit, and while not necessarily fatal to us, it is very pathogenic to the unfortunate poultry.

Want to know how serious they are about the threat? The Japanese government "has banned shipments of eggs and 330,000 chickens at 16 poultry farms within a 6.2-mile radius of the farm," according to the article. They are not taking any chances considering that over 150 people have died worldwide due to a strain of the bird flu.

Given the numbers, it seems as though trans fat poses more of a threat than this health hazard. But even so, it is still interesting to see how other countries are going to great lengths to protect themselves.