Why certain E. coli bacteria are so bad 

Thanks again to Ritual for sponsoring this video! I appreciate how they consider bioavailability with their supplements! (Just because you cram it down your gullet doesn't mean your body can use it.) Remember to click here ritual.com/ADAMRAGUSEA20 for 20% off your first month!

As QA for a meat production facility, thank you for covering this topic. My plant is almost entirely pork so some other good topics to cover would be the parasite Trichinella and the bacteria species Listeria monocytogenes. Also there's a fun combo between your last two videos: lactic acid fermentation to prevent pathogens in meat, a.k.a. salame.

Kind of an important fact I didn't see in the video. In med school here in Argentina we learned that the receptors that intercact with the toxin are more present in kids, so the official recomendation is to avoid ground beef in kids up to 5 years old.

I’m in medical school and this really was a great review of E. coli, shiga toxin, and hemolytic uremic syndrome

Ways to get shigella'd: 1. Eat at McDonald's at peak hours 2. Beseiged

The town I'm from in Scotland had one of the worst e. coli breakouts when 21 died from it in 96, it led to big overhauls in food safety in the country.

Awesome video. I was one of the Jack in the Box E-coli kids in Seattle way back when. I was sick in the hospital for a month. I learned a bunch from this video.

I once got norovirus while I was homeless on the streets of Seattle. I have ever after been an advocate for businesses not restricting access to their bathrooms to people who clearly need to go...now. Today, if I got noro, I'd call out sick from work, chained to my bathroom at home. Back then, I went _into_ work because it ensured I'd have access to a bathroom. Never got E. coli, but I went over 20 years without eating at Jack in the Box because of that 1993 news story.

Babe wake up, new A-Rag video just dropped.

I am impressed that Dr Carla Schwan studied in my hometown here in Brazil. It is awesome that she is a great researcher!

Thanks for this. I actually lost my brother just last month from an E.Coli infection. He was immune compromised and ended up getting it from a salad.

Seeing the work people do when their passion is funded by graduate programs. I’m about a year away from my undergrad but seeing pieces of media like this and my own interaction with my professors reinforces my choice every day. It’s pretty cool how we are just in an edutainment renaissance with digital media now.

I got E. Coli poisoning about 10 years ago and it was possibly the most miserable week of my 47-year-old life. Wash your grapes before you eat them!

I almost died twice from Shigalosis. This lake where I live is extremely filthy, and the 2 times I went there, I contracted Shigalosis, once when I was 3, and the other when I was 5. I'm 25 now, and I still remember specifically "blacking out" (it was a seizure), and waking up in the hospital with an IV in my arm.

I was a kid during the Jack in the Box outbreak. We went to the local Jack in the Box anyway and the staff gave us the full resturant service like Jack was suddenly a sit-down place. They were that delighted to have customers. We weren't worried because we knew they were using different beef and being careful about cooking it.

I once got infected with norovirus (during the covid pandemic, go figure). I had stomach cramps for a week. I couldn't eat, sleep or focus on anything. Sure, it could have been worse, but that week felt like an eternity. Medications barely worked, even if they did, only for 1-2 hours. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy...

Good topic, I'm a molecular biologist, we routinely use E. coli to amplify plasmids (little circles of DNA) which we then put into different organisms. I've always been assured that the strains we use are non-pathogenic but I've never actually known why.

That '93 outbreak was utterly devastating to Jack in the Box. I'm sure everyone old enough has stories of family refusing to eat at Jack in the Box ever again, or at least for outstandingly long periods of time. Even though it was incredibly geographically isolated, it was certainly the biggest media sensation over a food-borne illness I can remember.

Dr Carla Schwan made my day. I am Brazilian to, from the same state as her, and it was really cool to feel represented. Thanks Adam and Carla

I still remember the E Coli outbreak in Lettuce back in 2017 when I worked for walmart. We tossed EVERY packaged salad and lettuce item we had. Not even employees were allowed to take them, like normal

hey. I just want to share my story with e. coli as a young child. i got it from a contaminated apple. well I was 3 years old in the early 2000s and it started with strong diarrhea and... blood in it. my doctor got me INSTANTLY in to the hospital ( he was one of 2 people who saved my life). within a week things got VERY serious. I had kidney failure, problem with my pankreas. dehydration, still blood in it. a female doctor insisted to get me to a better hospital with a special dialysis. but the others wanted to transport me with a normal ambulance but she wanted to fly me with a helicopter. thanks to german health insurence we could do it. i was reanimated 3 times in the helicopter. within a few weeks I fully recovered. my kidneys are working just fine again. i dont need any medications. but my life was never the same. I had / have serious PTSD. I still have panic attacks when i just think about hospitals. and my imunesystem was terrible for almost 15 year. its better today but i am still sick very often. I was always a slim child but after that i got very overweight. today i am sadly at 150 kg (but i am fighting it now!). i am a total hygiene freak with my hands and i was them at least 15 - 20 times a day. but over all i am happy to be allive. these two doctors saved my life and i am so greatfull. thank you for this great video Pascal

Yeah, about five years ago I got what I thought was a bad case of food poisoning. It got worse very quickly, though, and I went to a minor emergency clinic to see what they could do for me. Turned out my kidneys were shutting down. I was quickly put on an ambulance and then got to spend a week in the ICU of a major hospital. I have an autoimmune disease that has left me with a compromised immune system. While I didn’t get QUITE as sick as some children or elderly people get, I was still quite sick and had to have several rounds of dialysis before my kidneys recovered. They never gave me antibiotics, either, which I didn’t really understand at the time but now I do! We never figured out where the bacteria came from, though. No other cases were reported in the area during the time I was hospitalized. It could have been ground beef, or it could have come from raw vegetables that weren’t properly washed. Let’s just say that I wash everything very thoroughly now and I cook ground beef until it’s very, very well-done.

I really can't wait for the raw flour video. I tried doing the research myself but ended up with so many dead ends and not even a good conclusion on if heat-treated flour is truly safe or not.

Just wanna say that Lauren is a breath of fresh air.. i loved listening to both of you guys on the podcast! Its good to have her on every once in a while ! She's adorable!

This is the only channel where I actually watch nearly all of the promotional bits. You transition so smoothly, and present in such an interesting way, that I watch. Finger hovering over the screen to skip, I end up watching the whole thing. Good job, you!👍

Your channel keeps getting better and better. Absolutely love all your content, keep up the GREAT work!

Great video adam. The videos with the experts are often really good.

A few years ago I got something horrible off some frozen yakisoba noodles from Costco. Being a big fan, I was happy to see them for sale at our local costco. I cooked some up, and they tasted fine, but what happened next was anything but fine. I hadn't eaten anything else unusual or risky in the time leading up to this, so I'm fairly confident that it came from these noodles. Luckily it started on a Friday night. I already suffered from IBS, but compared to when I was young, it's much milder now and doesn't usually kick off anywhere near as much. I had never been this ill before and never been this ill since, thankfully. I ended up spending the entire weekend on my feet, leaning against a wardrobe in the bedroom near the bathroom. I could not sit down, nor lay down because the change in body position would cause a violent need to get to the bathroom. I slept standing up against the wardrobe/tall dresser. It was the only position that I could really reliably be in that didn't make it worse. I do believe I had access to pepto bismol then and it did nothing to touch this. I mostly got by on sips of water, and the occasional saltine. Needless to say, I threw the rest away.

I am a food sci major at K-State! Your channel gives me hope and helps fuel my academic passion!

How cool it is that Dr. Schwan is Brazilian! Congrats to her on her researches 👏🏻🇧🇷✨

Keep up the great work! ❤️ I just took a 2 day microbiology class, ending yesterday. and we handled ecoli and I was waiting for an Adam Ragusea video

Adam, when she says “Brazilian Burger”, she’s probably referring to a regional fast-food called Xis (read as “chees”). It’s only known in the southern most state (Rio Grande do Sul, where’s she’s from) and maybe in the state up north. It’s a delicious fast food, give it a try. Look up for recipes for “Xis-Salada, “Xis-Bacon” or “Xis-Coração” (normal, with bacon or with chicken hearts). It’s basically a large, slightly sweet, round bread, cut in half. Inside we put mayo, ketchup, diced tomatoes, peas, corn, fried egg, cheese, burger patty (usually well done, so it’s harder to chew) and the extras (bacon or chicken heart for example). Sometimes there’s lettuce as well, but it gets soggy.

My brother's coworker lost their pre-teen son to Ecoli a few years ago. Crazy how it can just happen. Makes me want to boil everything I eat.

Love your food micro videos. Keep it going!

I really appreciate your kitchen scientist approach to youtube uploads. You are the foremost provider of usable content. Thank you! Have another "like".

I had norovirus 11 times before the age of 16. I'm just the kind of person who will get sick from the smallest exposure to norovirus, even if the person who exposed me isn't symptomatic and never will be from that infection (can you even call it an infection if you're asymptomatic?). The same is true for my dad and my brother, while my mom is seemingly immune to it - never got it once in her entire life, so when we three males in the family were all stuck on the shitter, she was the one getting groceries and cooking meals for all of us. Usually dad was the cook 4~5 days a week, but when the annual norovirus infection rolled around, she took over for a week or so. I once got it on the last day of a vacation trip, and ended up probably infecting the entire planeful of people on all three legs of the flight back - and my dad and my brother once I got back, that goes without saying. That time I was still toilet-bound for half a week after the rest were done with it, meaning almost two weeks in total for me. Not fun.

Ooooh man you've been killing it with videos this week

Adam, your food safety videos are amazing

Thank you for being an amazing video channel. This is such a great channel!

Missed your podcast this weekend

I knew you were from Brazil because that car you’re washing is a Ford Corcel the same color my grandfather had in 1974! Amazing, Dr. Shwan!

Around here E.coli comes up more in regards to pork - and because pig manure is a thing farmers like, it also comes up around vegetables and swimming in lakes whenever there's been lots of rain and river flooding. Remember it being a near constant warning and worry growing up in the 90's and 2000's, whereas beef was more concerned with "mad cow disease".

Side note: Glad you brought up the end of the sponsor spot. The one problem with trying to flow into talking points smoothly is that it's hard for some listeners to be able to tell when said talking point is over and we're back to the main topic.

In Gary Job Corps in the 90s, there was a super bad case of shigella that got every kid sick, we had like a 90 person infirmary with over 800 folks in cots, lined person to person and you know what flowed down the hallway like a small river of stink. Super fun times.

I didn't expect to watch a video about e. coli today but it was really interesting, thanks

Would love a video on C. difficile It’s not necessarily food related, but it’s a fascinating bacteria that has an… interesting cure aka “poop transplants”

When I was in 7th grade, in 1971, the student teacher in my biology class was talking about E. coli, and she said, “This is a bacteria we’re probably going to see problems with in the future.”

That segue was fire son. Thumb up well earned.

This was a very good/educational video. The only animal flesh I've ever been seriously sick from was chicken, and I got slightly sick from beef one time, and I don't know but for some reason I feel like seafood food poisoning would just be the absolute worst LOL especially if it's ciguatera. That shit cannot only get you super sick like Dr swan, but it can also linger for months and even after it has ran its course, you can't drink coffee or alcohol or eat things like nuts among other things for 6 months after recovery (no booze of caffeine for half a fkn year. That's sht is the devil). it can also cause seizures and other neurological problems on top of the diarrhea and vomiting. What's even scarier about that is it is completely undetectable; smell, sight, taste, there's no way to detect it, and there is no method of storage or cooking that can kill it either; flash freezing or frying or cooking the living shit out of it will not kill ciguatera, and so many types of fish carry it.

E coli (type 0157) nearly killed me back in 2006 (I was 6), I live in rural scotland and went to a farm fair with my family, most likely I touched the grass where cattle had been and then ate something with my hands. most people would have been fine but I had undiagnosed celiac disease giving me a weakened immune system, it led into Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome and fully shut down my kidneys. On the plus side my hospital room had a great view of the helipad at my local infirmary, and watching the helicopters (which I later found out were occasionally there to take me to the childrens hospital in glasgow for dialysis, but I always recovered just enough that it wasnt necessary, and they took someone else) but all those hours of watching helicopters land and take off led me to one of my greatest passions, aircraft

new to your channel, but I'm loving it

I learn a lot from you! Thankyou.

Omg you're getting so buff keep up the good work 👏🏽 🙌🏽

just listened to the Sawbones EP about E.coli earlier today lol really learning about the little bug!

Please do episode on how we get rid of phytic acid in grains skin , we are learning a lot from your content, thank you for your efforts ❤

I caught E Coli when I was 12. To this day we still don’t know how (I’m a very cleanly person, there weren’t any outbreaks in my area at the time and we rarely ate fast food back then). The CDC actually came by to ask a bunch of questions lol. I guess I was lucky, because while that week definitely wasn’t fun and consisted mostly of me camping out by the toilet waiting for bloody shits, my kidneys were fine and I recovered within the week with no long term issues.

Very informational !

I love that one of the comments about reading entrails to tell the future from an older video made its way into the script.

This channel is really interesting with it’s culinary history and science

i had norovirus once when i was younger and omg i was so violenty ill it sucked its the worst ive ever felt

I work for a food testing facility and one of our biggest clients is a beef processing facility. Everyday we receive samples from each cow they butcher that day. Testing is completed within 24 hours and results are given to the client. We have no say whether or not they recall or cancel their shipment but our testing is done fast enough so that they have the option to do so if positive samples are found. The type of testing we do is meant to prevent out breaks before they can occur.

thank you for the video

If we have to cook beef to get rid of E. Coli, why does washing lettuce get rid of it so easily?

I have a food microbiology exam this week so I'll be using this to study

And now I’m googling how to properly wash veggies to make sure I’m doing it right.

I love how educational this channel is about food, feels like a pbs program

Another banger! Thanks grandpa!

Currently work with Jack in the Box as a food safety advisor and trainer and I can tell you that since the 1993 outbreak there have been massive changes to the way the company operates and those changes were adopted across the board, most notably the development of the HAACP system of frequent and documented checks of the operation daily and the culture change around the handling and serving of beef. Very interesting to see what I work with daily features here!

I think people forget e coli doesn't just kill. A friend of mine caught it as a 6-month-old baby, went into organ failure, survived but with permanent kidney damage, and by the age of 30 was on dialysis until receiving a donor kidney at the age of 35. She chose not to have children in case she died and left them motherless. She has to take a cocktail of medicines daily for the rest of her life to prevent rejection, which means her immune system is really compromised and she gets ill all the time, which has led to loads of relationships failing as her partners can't cope. The impact is immense! Really, it's not just about the risk of dying. Thanks for your vid, Adam.

Salve, doutora!

Yes!!! Looking forward to the e.coli and flour video!!!

As an ecologist it made me so happy to see Adam use the term mutualistic relationship properly

My favorite E. Coli control mechanism I heard about fast food plants doing is if they find contamination, they not only throw away that batch, but also the batch before and the batch after. Just in case.

I was born in the 80s in Brazil. I remember one time I was 5 years old and I was so sick with a stomach virus I had to be taken to the pediatrician at least twice that I remember. And then when I was in my early teens in the early 90s I had a horrific case of stomach virus. And then in 2012 I got a stomach virus after visiting a family member that had stomach surgery. I was gonna comment that and then I saw that she is Brazilian too. I cant say Im surprised. Food safety here was non existent. Food didnt have expiration date until the early 90s.

I remember there being an E. Coli outbreak in Buenos Aires in the early 00s. I remember it was all over the news because someone's kid died. Apparently it was due to just one McDonald's employee that they ended up firing because he didn't follow proper sanitation guidelines.

My dad was one of the many that got sick during the Jack in the Box E. coil outbreak.

This is great I had campylobacter 4 weeks ago, I have been regrowing my gut botanicals and now training my toilet times. When I go to my Inlaws over the drink I get dysentery every time. I work with a client that has helicobacter pylori and he is a big BIG man (Watching a bloke walk around confused or emotional because toilet time is constant and burdening for the body). Heavy lifters will know of the amount of energy used when you're eating and crapping 6 meals a day. It is very important to not only learn of one end but the middle and tail end. Bravo.

The relationship she made between gut bacteria and previous infection and chrons disease was very interesting. Since there is no known cause or known cure. I have very severe atypical case of chrons disease so that really stuck out to me.

How about a full episode on botullism? How to test for it? How to avoid it with humidity >10% and no/low oxygen? Can we just air it out? Is there a specifc ph range that is safe? The use of oxygen absorbers or silica packs are how people are looking to long term store food, should we consider something else? nitrogen? This topic is talked about for storage of grains, dried foods, herbs (culinary and medicinal), canning, fermenting, etc... fear of botullism seems to be the first reason anyone is hesitant to start preserving their own food. Can you deep dive for answers?

Can you do a video about oleo-saccharum? I often see confusing and conflicting information about how it's made-- some people claim that solid sugar is pulling essential oil out of citrus peels through osmosis, and I haven't found any good sources on the mechanics for how oleo-saccharum is made, and what the actual composition of the syrup actually is.

Here in the Uk, we have certain antibiotics that are supposed to be banned for giving to animals because they form part of treatment for humans who get infected with, for example, salmonella. In dodgy parts of Europe, they are known to give human intended antibiotics to animals. This means that when children and old people get food poisoning, like salmonella, the antibiotics that should work, don’t. This was how it was described to me. People who run chicken farms in the uk, I personally know, have gone abroad to get Baytril and bring it home in their cars as they wanted to treat their flocks. Dodgy af. I tend to cook all my food till it falls from the bone, or I personally know the farmer and the number tag of the beast ( fortunately I live in a rural area) I don’t trust many.

I was actually learning this in my medical lab class! So wild

I see this becoming an issue since we are now " mechanically tenderizing " steak cuts . They are piercing the meat with needles to tenderize it at the factory . This leads to consumers undercooking steaks not knowing they should cook it to a higher temp . Yes even steaks are not 100% safe

Hey Adam, could you make a video about the purpose of parboiling and how much it affects the texture and flavor of food? I recently tried a recipe where the beef was parboiled and I'm not sure if that was necessary or how to know if it was. Thanks!

Thank you

I'm actually in Brazil visiting relatives this week. I've been eating lots of fruits and eating a lot of different foods I don't have in New England. I have mild diarrhea from all the fruit. I try to wash thoroughly and I don't eat much meat anyway but I try to be careful nonetheless

I remember jack in the box outbreak. Lived on east coast at the time where those establishments didn't exist. But my family swore off fast food since then

A cousin of mine got e coli from Chipotle a decade or so ago back when their was that outbreak

I think I may have got this when I was about 12. I remember having the shits and passing blood for like 2 months and legit thinking I was going to die. It took about a year for my gut to feel mostly normal again but 18 years later I still have digestive issues.

I had to study biology but your video came up. I mean, still works.

Having once earned a BS in cell biology, I found your presentation to be succinct and cogent. Thanks!👏

I have to say i'm pretty surprised to see adam having a sponsor selling a product so closely related to the topic of the video. So much so that he has to mention that the content outside the explicit ad is not an ad. I'd say it's a sign that it wasn't a great idea.

I just LOVE that shirt! Brainy Smurf and the word Nerd. Great!

hey so since we got some brazilian rep in this video this might be just the right time to ask u to consider maybe making a video about a brazilian dish? i would love to see your take on our cuisine

Well, i wish the good doctor carla luisa schwan a long, healthy life.

you should do a video on hurdle technology in food preservation

Watching this with E.Coli rn. Getting the real immersing experience

great vid.

A lifelong friend of mine, and her son, were in Seattle for a gymnastics event, and unfortunately, ate at that Jack in Box on their way back to Coeur d' Alene. They were SO sick, her son and her hospitalized. Not to the point of organ failure, thank the gods. But she has had gut problems ever since. Her son, I think, is fine now. She will rarely eat a burger and if she does, it had better be crispy and near black. She prefers hot dogs now. 😉 You know, it's funny. I was thinking about your last video this morning, about splatter and the meatballs. And how you segued that into talking about the bacteria resistant keyboard. It struck me at the time, when you said, "We've probably all done that 'not so thorough hand wash..." I thought, "No, Adam. Not all of us, especially with ground meat. I am so meticulous, I scrub and scrub everything twice and use bleach at the end. Maybe that comes from my friend's experience, but I am also very interested in science and raising animals and growing crops, so, it is on my radar.

I had c diff as a child and I suspect that was the trigger for Chron’s disease displaying itself in my life later on