Who's Eating Spinach Again?

In September of 2006, the Food and Drug Administration issued an advisory warning against the consumption of fresh spinach due to contamination with E. coli 0157:H7. Subsequently, spinach was largely recalled by manufacturers. Spinach is a healthful, nutrient dense food. Generally, low income and African American groups have low quality diets lacking in healthful items. Therefore, the objective of this report is to determine if persons in these groups who ate spinach prior to the recall were less likely to consume spinach in the weeks following the recall. A national telephone survey of 1200 Americans was conducted in November, 2006. Within two weeks of the recall's end 55% of participants that ate spinach before the recall and heard about the recall had not returned to eating spinach. Using Student's t‐tests, factors associated with a lower likeliness of eating spinach immediately following the recall include African American ethnicity (p ≤ 0.001) and having an income less than 35,000/yr p ≤ 0.000. Overall, groups with traditionally poor quality diets were less likely to return to eating spinach in the weeks following the recall. Since this study only assessed spinach consumption following the recall in participants that consumed spinach before the recall, it is likely the recall had more adverse effects on these groups that are all ready at risk for unhealthy diets. Funding Source: Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service of the United States Department of Agriculture under the National Integrated Food Safety Initiative: Grant # 2005‐51110‐02335.