MRSA

You won't believe what's lurking in your chicken now

Do you like to gamble?

It can be fun to try your luck at a game of chance every now and then.

But if you're buying mass-produced, factory-farmed chicken at the supermarket, you're gambling with your and your family's health and safety -- and those stakes are way too high to take any chances with!

We're hearing more and more scary stories about contaminated chicken making people sick. And it just keeps getting worse. The bacteria found in contaminated chicken is actually growing stronger, since factory-farmed chicken is constantly pumped full of antibiotics.

Now, according to the latest news, a bacterial infection that's not usually passed through food has made its way to tainted poultry in Denmark.

This new strain of MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is even more drug-resistant than previous MRSA strains -- and researchers have found it lurking in the chicken.

And it's not just microscopic pathogens posing a danger to you by way of your meat.

You may have heard that Tyson had to recall thousands of pounds of chicken nuggets after people found bits of hard plastic in their food.

The unappetizing plastic was likely from a piece of machinery breaking and getting ground up along with the massive amounts of chicken parts used to make processed nuggets.

When your meat is being made in a factory, who knows what might end up in there?!

If you're like the average American, you eat about 60 pounds of chicken every year. It's the most popular meat in America, beating out beef and pork for the number one spot on our dinner plates.

And that's a good thing -- because chicken is chock full of protein that helps build muscle, gives you energy, and keeps you feeling full.

What really matters is where the chicken is coming from -- and don't think you're safe if you're not importing your chicken from Denmark. It doesn't take very long for a superbug to travel across international borders and wind up on your doorstep.

But when you buy organic meat from a local farm (or at a farmer's market), you don't have to worry about what antibiotics the animals have been fed -- or what has fallen into their meat somewhere along the assembly line.

It may cost you a little more to go organic and local, but the price difference is really nothing compared to getting sick with an incurable infection or choking on a piece of plastic.

Flying the filthy skies

If you're anything like me, you enjoy boarding an airplane as much as scrubbing the toilet. Except, chances are, the toilet is a lot less messy.

It's bad enough that you're sharing an arm rest with some 400-pound chatterbox who's sweating through his T-shirt. But one row over, some fussy baby is blowing snot bubbles between his ear-splitting screams.

And that's when you realize that terrorists are the LEAST of your worries -- because there's already a filthy germ bomb detonating all around you.

In fact, it may have exploded DAYS before you stepped foot on the plane. That's because a new study from Auburn University found that disease-causing germs can live on airplane surfaces for up to ONE FULL WEEK!

That means seven full days ago a passenger may have drooled on your headrest, or used the in-flight magazine as a Kleenex, and their germs could still be having a party in seat 23A. In fact, researchers found potentially-deadly MRSA bacteria living on seat pocket cloth seven days after exposure, and E. coli surviving for 96 hours on armrests.

So much for the "friendly skies"!

If you have a commercial flight coming up, spend the next several days getting your immune system into shape. Load up on vitamin C and start taking some probiotics to beef up your gut's immune defenses.

And be sure you bring a Hefty-sized barf bag onto the plane. Because once you take a look around that jumbo germ jet, there's a good chance you're going to feel more than a little nauseous.