I believe in listening to families. Listening means hearing the 7-yr-old with cancer who can only go to school safely if her classmates are vaccinated, the families stuck in the vaccine court backlog, & the doctors who remember what Hib meningitis did to kids. This week, they were the ones left out.

There's an unspoken message, too, that the pricier version makes you a better parent or a more responsible shopper. Meanwhile, the preservatives getting the blame are the things keeping the BAD STUFF OUT! 😭

That's why this strikes a nerve for so many of us. "Preservative-free" sounds like common sense (why add stuff? surely natural is better?), so these labels tap into our instinct to protect our families, make safe ingredients sound scary, and charge more for words that are PURE MARKETING.

Frozen and canned produce can retain plenty of nutrients, while shelf-stable staples like bread and crackers help stretch a budget, cut food waste, and get dinner on the table on a busy weeknight. There's room for fresh and preserved on the same plate! 🍽️

You might be thinking… just eat fresh, local food from the farmers market! 🥬 If that's an option for you, GREAT! I love doing that when I can. Fresh food spoils fast, though, and most people can't shop that way, especially year-round.

Fun fact: Many "uncured, no nitrites added" meats rely on celery powder, which supplies chemically identical nitrite under a friendlier-sounding label.

I get why these ingredients can seem unnecessary, but they're there for a reason. Depending on the preservative, they keep mold, yeast, and bacteria at bay, slow fats from going rancid, or (in cured meats) help prevent botulism.

When I see ads bragging "free from additives and preservatives," all I hear is "bacterial playground." 🦠 🎡 🛝 🎢 🤢

They also got preventive antibiotics, and none got sick. The patient was treated and recovered. What would raise concern is confirmation that this was plague and, more importantly, new cases among the people she was in contact with. Neither has happened so far.

A few plague cases show up in the western US most years. When a man in Arizona died of pneumonic plague in July 2025, 46 people who may have been exposed got preventive antibiotics, and none got sick. A 2021 pneumonic plague case in Wyoming had 22 close contacts, including 19 healthcare workers.

Plague is also treatable. Antibiotics work well when started early, and people who have been exposed can take a short course of antibiotics to prevent illness. Public health teams know how to contain it by finding the contacts, monitoring them, and giving preventive antibiotics when indicated.

Pneumonic plague spreads through respiratory droplets, which generally requires close, face-to-face contact with someone who is sick and coughing. It doesn't hang in the air and travel across a room the way measles and COVID can, which makes it much harder to spread.

Plague has 3 main forms. Bubonic plague, usually spread by flea bites from infected rodents, is most common. Septicemic plague infects the bloodstream. Pneumonic plague infects the lungs & is the most dangerous form + the only one that can spread from person to person. Untreated, it's usually fatal.

As of Monday, local officials say none of the people under observation have developed illness linked to the suspected case. They're undergoing daily testing, which so far have all come back negative.

Meanwhile, earlier official statements mentioning plague were edited or deleted, which has raised questions about transparency.

It still isn't confirmed that this was plague. Russia's public health agency says she died of pneumonia of unknown cause and that testing found no organism linked to her lab work, but it hasn't said which pathogens it tested for. It also denies there was a lab accident.

Local media report that she broke a test tube containing Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, about a week earlier, and early reports pointed to pneumonic plague, the form that infects the lungs. Nearly 200 people who were in contact with her have been placed under medical observation.