CDC: Leafy Greens Lead Culprit for Food-Borne Illnesses

Produce Accounts for 46 Percent of Food-Borne Illnesses, CDC Says

We've been told our whole lives to load up on leafy greens, as they're packed with fiber, vitamins, and minerals. But a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that leafy greens are also the riskiest foods in terms of causing food-borne illnesses. The report, released today, uses the data of 4,589 food-borne illness outbreaks reported between 1998 and 2008 to determine what caused them. As it turns out, produce, such as fruits and vegetables, was responsible for 46 percent of the outbreaks. And among specific food categories, leafy greens accounted for the most illnesses, many of which were caused by norovirus. While meat and poultry didn't make as many people sick, when they did, the results were deadlier. Meat and poultry, which includes beef, game, pork, and poultry, accounted for 29 percent of deaths, and poultry alone caused 19 percent of deaths. The report stresses that, no, the findings don't mean you should avoid leafy greens and meat. Continue reaping the many benefits of fruits and veggies, it says, so long as they're "properly cleaned, separated, cooked, and stored to limit contamination." And as for meat, be sure to cook it to the proper internal temperature, and use a thermometer to check. That means 165 degrees Fahrenheit for poultry, 145 degrees Fahrenheit for whole meats, and 160 degrees Fahrenheit for ground meats, the report says.

Jack Lew's Signature and Yours: What We Learn from Handwriting

On the heels of the hullaballoo surrounding Jack Lew's penmanship—should the treasury secretary nominee be confirmed, U.S. currency will feature his cartoonish loop-de-loop of a signature—and National Handwriting Week (yes, you read that correctly), U.S. News wondered what, if anything, can be learned from chicken scratch.

The short answer: depends on whom you ask.

Graphology, the craft of deducing one's character traits by handwriting analysis, holds that tremendous insight can be gleaned about a person by taking the sum total of myriad variables like letter size, stroke pressure, the slant of the script, and its position on a page.

"There's about 5,000 different things that handwriting can reveal," says Kathi McKnight, a Colorado-based graphologist. Among them, she says, are everything from "who is wounded in love, to who has high self esteem and determination, to who is wracked with self doubt." Psychologists, for example, work with McKnight to help them "get to the heart of things with a patient more quickly and deeply," and teachers can use graphology to spot signs of depression in children, she says. [Read more: What Can We Learn from Handwriting?]

What to Serve on Game Day

If you've held fast to your New Year's resolution to eat healthier so far, you may want to steer clear of any Super Bowl parties to keep it that way. As we all know, traditional Super Bowl fare ranges from fried chicken wings and pizza to chips with high-fat dips, writes U.S. News blogger Tamara Duker Freuman.

For those of you determined to enjoy the big game AND keep your healthy eating momentum going, however, there are lots of ways to make it through the night without gaining too much yardage … around your waistline. Hosts and hostesses: Take note!

Capture the flavors, not the calories. Love nachos? Buffalo wings your thing? Why not recreate their signature flavor profiles, and use them to adorn a variety of more nutritious, lower-calorie carriers?

1. Forget the chicken wings; even if they're not fried, their high skin-to-meat ratio makes them a super fatty carrier for the buffalo seasoning you're after. Why not try broiled buffalo shrimp instead? A single, 1-ounce, raw chicken wing has about 65 calories; an equivalent portion of raw shrimp—about four large ones—has only 25 calories. [Read more: What to Serve on Game Day]

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