

That, or eat caramel apples that don't have sticks. While they look a little bit like candy canes. Stay away from "healthy" fruit-based treats and, instead, stick with the ubiquitous packaged-and-processed, industrially produced, corn-syrup-laden delights of the season. Green apple candy sticks have a classic striped look and an amazingly delicious and pucker-inducing flavor. So kids, this Halloween, take our advice. The weird thing about listeria poisoning, however, is that although most people show symptoms within two to three weeks of eating bacteria-laded food, others don't get sick until several months later. It can also cause meningitis, but is treatable with antibiotics if caught early. We're talking diarrhea, fever, muscle aches… you know, the whole gamut. Listeriosis causes all sorts of awful symptoms-before it kills you, which it does some of the time. Three companies-Happy Apple, California Snack Foods, and Merb's Candies-ended up recalling their caramel apples because the treats were made with Bidart fruit. The 2014 listeria outbreak was linked to apples produced and distributed by Bidart Brothers, which recalled all of their Granny Smith and Gala apples after testing showed the presence of listeria at their apple-packing plant. In the words of the authors, "Insertion of a stick into the apple accelerates the transfer of juice from the interior of the apple to its surface, creating a microenvironment at the apple-caramel interface where Listeria monocytogenes can rapidly grow to levels sufficient to cause disease when stored at room temperature." Delicious candy apple sticks of various flavor combinations, colors and sizes available at. And, evidently, the bacteria prefer a room-temperature environment. Delight your taste buds with candy apple sticks from. The space under the apple skin provides a nice place for listeria to grow. Juice from the apple is released, which drips into the caramel. The piercing of the apple with the stick may be what triggers the problem. Given that many caramel apples eaten around Halloween have sticks and are kept with little-to-no refrigeration for significant periods of time, scientists are warning that caution is required during the approaching holiday season. However, the caramel apples with sticks that were not refrigerated? Not good: "Significant pathogen growth was observed within 3 days at room temperature on caramel apples with sticks inserted," the study says. Guess what happened? There was no growth of listeria monocytogenes on the refrigerated caramel apples without sticks, and only slow growth on the refrigerated caramel apples with sticks. Some were refrigerated and others left at room temperature. Some apples had sticks inserted into them before the dipping and others did not.

So, they inoculated some apples with listerial monocytogenes and then dipped them in caramel coating. The scientists had an inkling that there was something about the process of making caramel apples that fostered the spread of listeria. READ: You Actually Can Die from Eating Raw Cookie Dough
