"The 10 types of foods included in the list account for nearly 40 percent of all foodborne illness outbreaks linked to FDA-regulated foods since 1990"

"50,000 illnesses were linked to these 10 foods"

50 000 * 2.5 = 125 000 illnesses (125 000 * 40% = 50 000)

125 000 / 19 years = 6580 illnesses per year

6580 illnesses and a population of 300 million means that there will be 1case of reported food-borne illness for every 45 000 people in a year. Compared to how many cases I remember from when I was a teenager in the 1970s, this is incredibly few.

Also important, the number of people affected by unhealthy diet will be substantially higher. This is why they say there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. Risky foods, to me, are ones that are likely to give you a heart attack when you're 35. Ones that give you a 1:45000 chance of illness (to say nothing of serious complications) are quite safe.

Not to mention, we aren't exactly comparing apples to apples here. Leafy greens covers a heck of a lot more individual food items than oysters.

It just goes to show that you should never, ever take statistics at face value.

50,000 illnesses/250,000,000 people/9 years = 0.00002 illnesses per person per year.

Thank you. This is a major problem with how media portrays data in news stories. Most people would see 50k over 9 years as a huge number, but if it were instead presented as an individual having a %0.002 chance of getting ill from these foods, or as about %0.0022 of the population is affected per year, the story takes on new meaning. Understanding how to present data like this should be required learning for journalists.

Of course there is always the chance that this is deliberate, and done to make the story more sensationalistic, but I prefer to follow Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

Is that because of the alibi green stuff that gets slapped on burgers?

No, it's basically a list of foods commonly consumed raw. The chicken was far more likely to make you sick when consumed raw, but the salmonella died somewhere around 150°F.