As a new year rolls around and our pockets start to feel empty after the holidays, we look back at an older post for ways to penny-pinch without short-changing your kids: Save money: How to penny pinch without hurting your children. And whether your children receive gift cards, gelt, or cash gifts this season, we direct you to the popular post  Teaching kids money smarts for ideas on how to help them manage their new stash. 

Best wishes from your Two Peds,

Drs. Kardos and Lai
©2011 Two Peds in a Pod®

In case you missed the live internet radio show- hit the arrow to tune in here: 

Dr. Lai and her husband had a running debate about when to replace kitchen sponges. Today we thank guest blogger Dr. Karina Martino, Food Safety Engineer, for exposing the germs in our kitchens. We certainly learned a lot, and Dr. Lai’s husband lost a bet.
Naline Lai, MD and Julie Kardos, MD

WHO’S THE WORST OFFENDER IN THE KITCHEN???

The winner is…….the kitchen sponge (and dishcloth)! The next worst offender is your kitchen sink. This is where vegetarians have a definite advantage since they don’t bring raw meat into their homes. There’s less chance of E. coli and Salmonella spreading, but vegetarians still have to be on the lookout for viruses and parasites. 

What are the kitchen’s hot germ zones?

In descending order by highest bacterial count, these are:

1. Sponges and dishcloths

2. Sink drain area

3. Faucet handles

4. Cutting boards

5. Refrigerator handles

Here are simple steps that you can follow to create a healthier kitchen environment:

Dip sponges after every use in dilute sanitizer water (1 teaspoon bleach per quart of water); boil them for 3 minutes on a weekly basis.

• Change dish cloths daily, especially after wiping up raw meat juices.

• Wash sinks with hot soapy water prior to food preparation and before washing dishes.

• Wipe down refrigerator handles daily with dilute sanitizer water.

• Choose non-porous cutting boards that are easy to clean.

• Avoid rinsing raw meats. It contaminates the sink. If you cook meat at the correct temperature for enough time, bacteria on raw meat will be killed.

When we are handling food products everything in the kitchen must be clean, especially ourselves. It is vital to wash our hands with soap and hot water for at least 20 seconds before han­dling any food product. Each time you re-enter the kitchen from outdoors or any other place in the house where you might have contaminated your hands, you should wash your hands again.

Clean clothing, including aprons, is also an important part of personal hygiene. Dirty clothes and dish towels are a good place for bacteria to hide and grow. Sneezing and coughing spreads germs from our lungs, throats, and noses. When handling food, we must control the spread of germs from these natural occurrences by covering our mouths with dispos­able tissues and then rewashing our hands.  

While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provides information about illness from food in homes, it does not yet offer statistics about how many people become ill from their kitchen sponges. However, here are some facts for you to keep in mind:

• The kitchen environment can be more heavily contaminated with fecal bacteria (those bacterial species associated with feces) than the bathroom, suggesting that the risk of spreading infection in the home may be highest in the kitchen-the area in the home where food is prepared.

• Microbiological surveys of domestic kitchens have found significant contamination from a variety of bacterial contaminants, including E. coli, Campylobacter, and Salmonella.

• Pathogenic organisms (germs that cause disease) have been shown to be introduced in the home by people, food, water, pets and insects.

• The domestic kitchen is not used only for food preparation, but may serve as a laundry, a workroom, and a living area for family pets. Each of these functions can serve to introduce bacterial contamination into the kitchen environment.

Moreover, research focusing specifically on the kitchen environment has found:

• 67% of kitchen sponges may be contaminated with fecal bacteria

• Contaminated cloth towels serve to transfer bacteria to dishes during drying

• 82% of sink faucet handles are contaminated during food preparation

• 60% of people do not wash the cutting board after cutting raw meat or poultry and before cutting fresh vegetables for salads

• 9% do not wash the work surface at all after cutting raw chicken

So, please don’t duplicate these mistakes! The next time that you get ready to do your dishes with your six-month-old sponge… think again!… either toss it or get your Clorox immediately!

Karina G. Martino, PhD

Dr. Martino received her Masters degree and her PhD in Food Safety Engineering from Michigan State University. A former professor at University of Georgia, she now has her own consulting business (www.kgminnovations.com) and is the mom of two children. 

©2011 Two Peds in a Pod®

If you live on the East Coast of the United States, you were bombarded today by a surprise pre-Halloween snowstorm. Now that we have our power back, we thought we’d share with you a few posts we were reminded of today:

We’re back from the national American Academy of Pediatrics conference in Boston and we’re galvanized to make a positive impact on youth.  Just in time for Red Ribbon Week, the national campaign for halting substance abuse Oct 23-31 (www.redribboncoalition.com), we bring you facts for you to use as you talk about three drugs kids generally consider “harmless”: marijuana, anabolic steroids, and prescription medications.

Yes, yes, yes. 

There are many deadly diseases we can’t prevent, but we do have the power to prevent a few. We now have the ability to prevent your children from getting some types of bacterial meningitis, pneumonia, and overwhelming blood infections. With vaccines we can prevent cases of mental retardation, paralysis, blindness, deafness, and brain infections. Immunizations are a safe way of boosting children’s natural immune systems. Yet some of our parents continue to doubt the benefits of vaccines and to fear harm from them.

Let’s look at another kind of prevention.  You would never drive your car without putting a seat belt on your child. Even if you don’t know anyone who was in a fatal car accident, you still buckle you and your child up. You may know a kid who emerged from a car accident with only a scrape, yet you still buckle you and your child up. 

You may never know a child who is paralyzed by polio or who died of whooping cough, but it does happen and can be prevented. Just like with car accidents, it’s better to prevent the injury than to play catch-up later. Dr. Kardos’s grandfather routinely rode in the front seat of his car without his seat belt because he “had a feeling” the seat belt might trap him in the car during an accident. Never mind that epidemiologists and emergency room doctors have shown people are much more likely to die in a car accident if they are not wearing a seat belts, he just “had a feeling.”

When it comes to your children, parental instinct is a powerful force. We routinely invite our patients’ parents to call us about their children if their instincts tell them something might be wrong, and we always welcome and at times rely on parents’ impressions of their children’s illnesses to help us make a diagnosis and formulate a treatment plan.

However, in the face of overwhelming evidence of safety and benefits of vaccines,  we pediatricians despair when we see parents playing Russian roulette with their babies by not vaccinating or by delaying vaccinations. We hope fervently that these unprotected children do not contract a preventable debilitating or fatal disease that we all could have prevented through immunizations.

There is no conspiracy here. We both vaccinate our own children. We would never recommend any intervention where the potential for harm outweighs the potential for good. We have valid scientific data that every year vaccines save thousands of lives. One of them could be your child’s life.

Should you vaccinate your child?

YES!

Julie Kardos, MD and Naline Lai, MD
©2011 Two Peds in a Pod®

Visit these posts for more information about vaccines: How Vaccines Work, Evaluating Vaccine Sites on the Internet, and Closure: there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism

Also, please visit  the recent Institute of Medicine’s analysis of vaccine side effects.

Wondering what crawled into your child’s room and bit her in the middle of the night? If you see two little pinpricks side by side, it’s probably a spider. Spider fangs make two little bite marks. Unfortunately, by the time you examine it in the morning, the bite may be so puffy and red that the two marks are no longer visible. With the exception of the Black widow spider and the Brown recluse spider, most spider bites are harmless and cause only a little bit of irritation. Over-the-counter hydrocortisone 1% ointment, ice, and an analgesic such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen can take the edge off of the itch and/or pain.

Naline Lai, MD and Julie Kardos, MD
©2011 Two Peds in a Pod®

We love it! With MyPlate, the United States Department of Agriculture’s new depiction of “a good diet” is easier to understand than the food pyramid. Mentally cut your kid’s plate in half. On one side are fruits and veggies, on the other side are grains and protein. The dairy is represented by a cup. Check out choosemyplate.gov for all sorts of hints including a personal plan which calculates the amount of each food group kids (and adults) above two years old need daily.

We’re wondering when people will start hearing about the “new pyramid”. We think the food pyramid gained prominence partially because of it’s visibility on cereal boxes. After all, we all stare groggily at the back of cereal boxes while eating breakfast.  In the food pyramid days, grains were a large part of the pyramid base. Will the cereal companies have as much incentive to post MyPlate if grains have been relegated to a quarter of the plate?

We’ll find out.

Naline Lai, MD and Julie Kardos, MD

©2011 Two Peds in a Pod®

I love French fries, I mean really, who doesn’t? They’re probably one of the most delicious treats on the planet, but unfortunately they’re also one of the worst treats when it comes to our health. You’ll likely want to opt for baked “fries.”

It’s about overall diet. Ideally we should enjoy a diet that includes lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, grains, and legumes, and one that is devoid of processed foods and sugary sodas. Even diet sodas may be harmful as they are laden with sweeteners made from chemicals.

Also very important, according to doctors, is maintaining a healthy weight. If you’ve had the pleasure of eating baked “fries,” you know what a tasty option they are; if not, please give the baked variety a chance.

You can cut some russet potatoes a bit thick and coat them and coat them with a little extra-virgin olive oil, some rosemary, a little salt and pepper and bake them until golden at 350 degrees, usually between 30-35 minutes. You can do the same with sweet potatoes, but use a little cracked black pepper instead of the rosemary. I normally boil my sweet potatoes first for about 15 minutes. They are a lot easier to peel that way. The recipe is in my book, My Italian Kitchen on amazon.com.

There is no reason to give up the foods you love, just find healthier ways to make them. This way of thinking has become my mantra. It could well become yours too, if it isn’t already.

Buona Salute! To Your Health~

Janet

Returning guest blogger Janet Zappala is a certified nutritional consultant and author of My Italian Kitchen — Home-Style Recipes Made Lighter & Healthier. She is also a six-time emmy award winning television journalist and the host of Wealth of Health at www.janetzappala.tv. Janet is a busy mom as well and is always creating ways to offer up delicious, nutritious foods that are quick and easy to make.