[Updated]Turkey Burger Not Always the Healthy Choice When It's Loaded With Salmonella

Hardee's/Carl's Jr.

Updated Tuesday, April 5 Today the St. Louis City Department of Health issued a warning about the recalled Jennie-O Turkey Burgers as a precaution.

In an email to Gut Check, Harold L. Bailey, Jr., Public Information Officer for the St. Louis City Department of Health said, "We are not aware of any of the recalled product being in the St. Louis area, but we have contacted food establishments in the city, including child and adult daycares, to alert them. We are informing them to make sure they check the lot numbers of the product if they have it."

How do you know if you have the recalled product lurking in your freezer? Here's the label information as provided by the health department:

4-pound boxes of Jennie-O Turkey Store All Natural Turkey Burgers with seasonings. Lean white meat. Each box contains 12 1/3-pound individually wrapped burgers.

A use by date of "DEC 23 2011" and an identifying lot code of "32710" through "32780" are ink-jetted on the side panel of each box, just above the opening tear strip. Establishment number "P-7760" is located within the USDA mark of inspection on the front of each box. The products were packaged on Nov. 23, 2010, and were distributed to retail establishments nationwide.

Jennie-O's website has a special section if you have questions about the recall.

Now, back to the fun ...

All-natural turkey burgers are the healthy alternative to high-fat beef, right? Not so much right now. On Saturday Jennie-O recalled 55,000 pounds of frozen ground turkey for salmonella contamination. The product was sold in four-pound boxes of twelve patties at Sam's Club.

Just how big of a pile of ground turkey is that?

Hardee's started shilling their lower-calorie 8-ounce turkey burgers last week. The recalled turkey could make 110,000 burgers. Or 478 life-size turkey sculptures of Miss Universe contestants, like Gizem Memiç, the reigning Miss Turkey featured in Hardee's turkey burger commercials.