Listeria … times 2

First, the FDA has recalled Vidalia onions sold by A&M Farms (specifically the Little Bear brand) because they might carry the listeria bacteria (Listeria monocytogenes). In Georgia, it affects Publix stores in Barrow, Clarke, DeKalb, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Hall, Jackson, Oconee, and Walton counties.

Second, the FDA has also found the cause of Florida’s listeria outbreak (which has infected people across 10 states, including Georgia): Big Olaf Ice Cream. The company has warned retailers, but there’s no official recall.

Another potential universal flu vaccine

This one is from Georgia State, and (they say) works against a wide variety of strains: H1N1, H5N1, H9N2, H3N2, and H7N9. It’s also cheap and easy to produce. Downside: It’s only in the lab so far.

Set your Google alerts to “M2e-stalk protein vaccination.”

Florida’s health woes continue

Now it’s a potential meningitis outbreak caused by — wait for it — Giant African Land Snails.

Here’s a sentence you don’t want to hear: Giant African Land Snails can carry the rat lungworm parasite, which can cause a form of meningitis in humans — a form called “rat lungworm disease.”

[I]f someone challenges you to eat a live slug during a Truth or Dare game, choose “truth” instead. So what if you admit that you are in love with your best friend? It’s better than getting meningitis.

Dementia: When medication fails

One after another, potential treatments for dementia (broadly) and Alzheimer’s (specifically) have failed in clinical trials. That means, say (some) neurologists, that we need to look at other ways to prevent and treat it.

One of the best, somewhat surprisingly, is eye care. Bad eyesight is one of a bunch of “modifiable risks” of dementia — and one of the more potent. (Some others include excessive alcohol consumption, smoking, traumatic brain injuries, and air pollution.)

Altogether, modifying those modifiable risks could prevent a whopping 62 percent of dementia cases, according to researchers at the University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins. And almost 2 percent could have been prevented with better glasses or cataract surgery.

“Even small percentages — because so many people have dementia and it’s so expensive — can make a huge difference to individuals and families, and to the economy.”

The Long Read: Blocking the Sun edition

Why Americans are “Not Allowed to Have the Best Sunscreens in the World.” (Spoiler: The approval process here is must more stringent … too stringent, perhaps.)

The FDA hasn’t added a new active ingredient to its sunscreen monograph—the document that details what is legally allowed in products marketed in the U.S.—in decades. The process for doing this is so onerous that L’Oreal, a French company, chose to go through a separate authorization process to get one of its sunscreen ingredients onto the consumer market in 2006.