Volume 24 · Number 3 · Spring 2007
The Elvis of E. Coli
Food safety lessons go down better with a healthy dose of music, says Carl Winter, director of UC Davis’ FoodSafe program.
Winter takes vintage popular songs, tinkers with their lyrics to produce parodies with strong food-safety messages and then uses them to educate both students and the general public. He has produced two CDs, Stayin’ Alive (since updated to Still Stayin’ Alive) and Sanitized for your Consumption: A Menu of Musical Morsels. As a reminder that simple hand washing can help thwart food-borne diseases, he borrowed the tune from the Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and replaced the lyrics with:
Make sure you clean your nails
And dry with towel or fan
Prevent those nasty microbes
From spreadin’ ’cross the land
You’d better wash your hands
You’d better wash your hands
Winter gives 25–30 live concerts each year for organizations, schools and civic groups, and has distributed about 20,000 CDs around the world from his Web site and concerts.
“I travel and reach audiences I never thought I would reach,” he says. “In academia, the tradition has been the didactic approach, where you tell students what they need to know and they tell you if they know it. But now the expectations of being entertained are so much greater.”
To hear Carl Winter’s music, view animated videos, read lyrics and order CDs, visit his Food Safety Music Web site.