If Popeye were still a pop-culture icon, the recent E. coli outbreak would do to his career what text-messaging congressional pages has done to someone else’s.

Imagine, if you will, our hero Popeye crooning his immortal theme song – “I’m strong to the finish ‘cuz I eat my spinach. I’m Popeye the sailorman” – against the backdrop of Food and Drug Administration warnings about the potentially lethal consequences of eating bagged, prepared spinach. Talk about swimming against the tide.

If corporate espionage had been one of the evils confronted by Popeye, a natural storyline would have had the evil Bluto, Popeye’s arch-nemesis and rival for Olive Oyl’s affection, orchestrating the E. coli outbreak to deprive Popeye of the nutrients that caused his biceps and triceps to swell and gave him superhuman strength.

As it happens, the story here in the fall of 2006 seems much more mundane. Through inadequate procedures for washing fresh spinach, E. coli gained a foothold in the supply chain. As of the end of last week, the FDA was reporting 199 confirmed cases of illness, including three deaths and 102 hospitalizations, of people who had eaten prepared fresh spinach.

The FDA’s investigations led to central California, where much of our bagged salad greens are grown, and officials have focused on one farming operation in particular, Natural Selection Foods.

Meanwhile, the whole mess is confusing to consumers. Most directly affected are those who had come to rely on the convenience of bagged, pre-washed greens for salads and didn’t mind paying a premium to have someone else do the chopping, trimming and washing. I confess to being one of them.

Because of the higher price charged for ready-to-eat salad ingredients, most people who planned to cook their spinach didn’t buy the bagged, pre-washed stuff. Even so, the loose-leaf spinach that is sold unbagged and unwashed also disappeared from grocery stores after the recall in mid-September. We also saw news reports of spinach farmers plowing under their fall crops because the market had evaporated.

Loose-leaf spinach has returned to supermarkets in northeast Kansas, and bagged spinach is reportedly on the way. It will be interesting to see whether people like me, who traded control over the cleanliness of food for convenience at dinnertime, will again take the easy way out.

In retrospect, I think I was horribly naÃive to trust industrial farming to wash away every trace of E. coli without compromising the quality of the fresh spinach.

In tracking this story, I have found the FDA’s Web site (www.fda.gov) to be particularly informative. There you will find frequent updates on the progress of the investigation, as well as useful tips for consumers.

People who cook fresh spinach and those who use frozen and canned spinach have nothing to fear from this E. coli outbreak. Cooking fresh spinach for 15 seconds at 160 degrees will kill it. That basically amounts to a quick blanching or a leisurely swish around the bottom of a saute pan.

As it happens, E. coli cases were reported in 26 states, none of them Kansas. However, that is no cause for complacency, as our neighbor Nebraska has reported 11.

If this episode teaches us anything, it will be that we should remain mindful of the need for sanitary practices during food preparation, even when a package of produce is labeled “ready to eat.”

Prepared sliced mushrooms, which also make a frequent appearance on my shopping list, are another case in point. I’m not likely to be comfortable again putting prepared fresh produce directly into a salad. When I do use such items, I’ll be giving them an extra rinse, just in case.