With approx. 60,000 cases of food poisoning caused by E.coli 0157:H7 reported each year in the U.S., scientists at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been looking at ways to tackle this problem.
Introducing the new ingredient in burgers to aid in this fight, olive powder! The researchers also tried two other additions to a “standard” beef burger mix, apple powder and onion powder. Olive powder performed the best against E.coli. But that’s not all, they also looked at the formation of carcinogens that can occur when burgers are cooked to the recommended temperature needed to kill E.coli and found that the olive powder reduced the incidence of two of these, MeIQx and PhIP by 80 and 84% respectively.
But now for the important question, how do they taste?