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Sadly, our food inspection rules, though somewhat tightened recently, will not prevent you from getting sick if you consume a contaminated food that has somehow slipped through the ropes. Food-borne illnesses cause about one in six Americans to get very sick every year, with 128,000 hospitalizations, and an estimated 3,000 deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as Deborah Kotz reports at The Boston Globe. My sister, who's never met a vegetable she didn't like, became seriously ill with food poisoning (doctors thought it might have been the arugula) about a week before her first son was due.  Happily, the baby was born healthy, though there was some concern initially that the contamination might have contributed to a neurological problem. Kotz writes that the introduction of federal laws to regulate food safety, including rules on how produce is grown, harvested, and distributed throughout the country has officials hoping "they w...

OK.  Here's the question.  Would we be better off eating all organic foods ? We're certainly buying -- and paying for -- it.  Sales of organic food have soared over the past decade, up to   $30 billion in 2011, or 4.2% of all U.S. food and beverage sales, according to the Organic Trade Association, as The Wall Street Journal reports today. Probably like you, I don't mind paying a little bit more for organic milk and meat (though I've stopped buying organic produce because if you wash the regular stuff, you get most of the chemicals off, and I worry about fecal matter). But guess what?  No expert has yet been able to prove eating all organic food is better for us. Now, eating food grown without the help of synthetic chemicals" is probably safer and healthier to consume than food containing those substances, even in trace amounts," The WSJ says. And many experts say they believe Americans "should try to substitute organic products for conventional o...