Singing Scientist Returns With More Food-Safety Tunes

Carl Winter, a toxicologist and director of the UC Davis FoodSafe program, debuted songs from his new CD, "Sanitized for Your Consumption: A Menu of Musical Morsels," at this summer's Institute of Food Technologists' annual meeting in Chicago.

The new collection, ready just in time for National Food Safety Education Month in September, includes a musical reminder to avoid food-related illnesses by thoroughly cooking meat in this song that follows the tune of Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler":

You gotta know when to heat 'em
Know when to eat 'em
Know when to wash your hands
And decontaminateS.

Other selections from Winter's encore recording include "You Better Wash Your Hands," taken from The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand"; "They Might Kill You/We Are The Microbes," from Queen's "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions"; and "I Sprayed It on the Grapevine," from Marvin Gaye's hit "I Heard it Through the Grapevine." He's a serious scientist, but when Winter sits down at the keyboard, he finds himself humming tunes and tinkering with lyrics that can better convey food-safety messages than the language of science.

"In this era of nanosecond attention spans and education via entertainment, I've found that the musical approach successfully reaches audiences that don't respond well to traditional methods of education," he says.

He has performed his songs at numerous professional meetings and in university classes.

Winter released his first compact disc, "Stayin' Alive: A Hearty Helping of Food Follies and Science Serenades," in 1998. Downloadable music files and lyrics are available at <http://foodsafe.ucdavis.edu/music.html>.

Media contacts: Carl Winter, FoodSafe, (530) 752-5448, ckwinter@ucdavis.edu; Patricia Bailey, News Service, (530) 752-9843, pjbailey@ucdavis.edu.