Bamboo Shoots

[nokia]

Hi foody folks,

My spouse(non-thai) was down with severe food poisoning a few months ago after eating cooked bamboo shoots & cooked chicken liver bought from a cooked food stall in a thai market. Could it be due to the bamboo shoots? Any advice?

Cheers!

[tutsiwarrior]

Hi foody folks,

My spouse(non-thai) was down with severe food poisoning a few months ago after eating cooked bamboo shoots & cooked chicken liver bought from a cooked food stall in a thai market. Could it be due to the bamboo shoots? Any advice?

Cheers!

sumbody said on a previous thread (miz Jet?) that workers in a pickled bamboo shoot factory in Thailand came down with a nasty disease...

just take a whiff from a jar ob dat stuff...if it ain't toxic I don't know what is...

[Farma]

I’ve seen bamboo shoots being canned in villages. Once collected and then stripped back to the edible shoot they are soaked and placed in new kerosene style tins. Rain or pump water is added and the tins placed over a wood fire and boiled for hours. I can’t recall seeing these new tins being rinsed prior to packing.

At the end of the boiling process the local plumber would do the rounds and solder the screw lids onto the tins. The finished product was then sold to the traveling bamboo buyer.

Unless the market seller has time to gather and process their bamboo these tins are where they get their bamboo from so there’s always a possibility the bamboo came from a contaminated tin.

[nokia]

Not sure if the market seller use fresh bamboo or canned bamboo. There's a possibility that the tin was contaminated. And the other possibility was that the bamboo wasnt thoroughly cooked, thus still containing cyanide which is deadly.

----from internet

The cyanogenic glycoside in bamboo is taxiphyllin. Taxiphyllin is unusual amongst the 60 or so known similar compounds in that it degrades readily in boiling water. Thus the normal preparation of bamboo shoots should remove any problem.

[DurianChips]

Hi foody folks,

My spouse(non-thai) was down with severe food poisoning a few months ago after eating cooked bamboo shoots & cooked chicken liver bought from a cooked food stall in a thai market. Could it be due to the bamboo shoots? Any advice?

Cheers!

The only time I've ever had food poisoning it Thailand, it was due to a green chicken curry with bamboo shoots.

[cimot]

guddd....guddddd

[Jimbob1]

I think I would be looking at how fresh the chicken liver was before questioning the bamboo ...

Poultry commonly carry campylobacter and salmonella in their gut, which can contaminate the carcass during processing; don’t eat any part of a chicken or turkey pink. Stuffing makes it harder for the middle to get hot enough to kill the bacteria, and also increases the chance of introducing new contamination in the stuffing.

Jim.

[nokia]

I think I would be looking at how fresh the chicken liver was before questioning the bamboo ...

Poultry commonly carry campylobacter and salmonella in their gut, which can contaminate the carcass during processing; don’t eat any part of a chicken or turkey pink. Stuffing makes it harder for the middle to get hot enough to kill the bacteria, and also increases the chance of introducing new contamination in the stuffing.

Jim.

Chicken liver's a possibility too. Not sure whether was it thoroughly cooked or pink inside. It's def gd advice not to eat chicken pink with bird flu still around.

[TheDon]

The culprut is the chicken liver, there is a far greater chance of getting food poisioning from not cooked well or off chicken liver then off bamboo shoots.

But hard to say, but if I was to have a punt on it I would put $10 on the liver

[pete_r]

Canned bamboo shoots are known to cause botulism in Thailand, when the sterilization hasn't been done thoroughly enough, or if the cans where re-contaminated before sealing. The culprit for botulism is Clostridium botulinum, a bacteria that can survive prolonged cooking at 100 Celsius and is then able to grow and prosper under the low-oxygen conditions inside the sealed cans.

There was a big outbreak in Nan province last year: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=63726

[ratchabuild]

Canned bamboo shoots are known to cause botulism in Thailand, when the sterilization hasn't been done thoroughly enough, or if the cans where re-contaminated before sealing. The culprit for botulism is Clostridium botulinum, a bacteria that can survive prolonged cooking at 100 Celsius and is then able to grow and prosper under the low-oxygen conditions inside the sealed cans.

There was a big outbreak in Nan province last year: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=63726

Meat is the likeliest source though not absolutely certain. Its easier to contaminate chicken than bamboo