Raise your hand if you’ve ever experienced food poisoning. If you’re one of the spared Americans who hasn’t, let me describe it to you: You wake up in the morning. The sun is shining. All is good in the world — until you eat or drink something tainted with an unwanted pathogen.
At first, you may not even notice. But within a few days or even hours, you start to feel a few cramps and experience just a tad of diarrhea. Then, the diarrhea comes on full force, moving through your gut like the Amtrak Acela speeding from Boston to New York City. At this point, you are seat belted to the toilet bargaining with a higher authority to make it stop.
[See: 10 Ways to Get Over Food Poisoning.]
All this could happen simply because you drank some raw water, or water derived from sources in the environment like underground springs that hasn’t been treated to remove dirt, debris and foodborne-illness-carrying pathogens. At an insane price of $6 a gallon, you can purchase raw water that may contain bacteria such as salmonella and E.coli, viruses such a hepatitis and norovirus and parasites such as cryptosporidium and giardia.
These pathogens can all land you in the ER and lead to side effects that can last weeks, if not longer. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 128,000 Americans are hospitalized and 3,000 die after eating contaminated foods and beverages of any kind.
Because clean water is an essential nutrient needed for life, Congress first passed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974. The act now protects drinking water and its sources in order to make sure you don’t ingest contaminants that can make you sick. So basically, the water flowing from your faucet, which costs less than a penny per gallon, is continually monitored to save your life. Raw water, on the other hand, is more than 600 times more expensive and more likely to make you sick. I am not an accountant, but I know a safe bargain when I see it. Skip the raw water and drink safer, cheaper H20 from your tap.
[See: Can You Trust Your ‘Yuck’ Reflex?]
Here’s what to know about two other raw products:
Raw Milk
Raw milk comes from cows, sheep or goats and has not be pasteurized. Pasteurization heats the milk to a temperature that kills harmful bacteria that can make you sick. According to the CDC, if you drink unpasteurized raw milk, you are 150 times more likely to get sick and 13 times more likely to land in the hospital than if you drink pasteurized milk.
While there are myths floating around the internet claiming that pasteurization drains the nutrition out of milk, take comfort in knowing that it doesn’t. Milk is an excellent source of vitamin D, calcium and potassium — three nutrients many Americans are falling short of daily. Keep drinking the milk; just make sure it’s pasteurized.
Raw Meat
The only way to kill the harmful bacteria that can cause foodborne illness in meat is to properly cook it. Consuming any raw meat, but especially raw ground beef, is a disaster in the making. When raw meat is ground, any harmful pathogen that was on the surface of the animal is now mixed in, spreading the bacteria throughout.
I suggest skipping the steak tartare (ground beef mixed with seasonings and served raw) on the menu and instead order something that is appropriately cooked. By the way, pets don’t do well on raw food either. In a study done by the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, raw pet food was more likely than cooked dog food to contain bacteria that could send Spot to the vet.
[See: Fresh Fish Shouldn’t Stink, and Other Rules of Thumb.]
Forget this raw trend. Consuming raw water, milk and meat could make you a very sick puppy and make your life miserable.
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What Is Raw Water — and Should You Drink It? originally appeared on usnews.com
