Two-year-old Idaho boy dies after eating spinach

A 2-year-old boy who drank a spinach shake died from E. coli in a case that is likely related to the U.S. health scare around spinach, a health official said on Friday.

Kyle Allgood, of Chubbuck in the heart of Idaho’s potato country, died on Wednesday night at a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, said Ross Mason, a spokesman for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

“His mother or someone in the house made him a spinach smoothie,” Mason said. “It’s pretty likely that he died of E. coli,” he said.

The outbreak of E. coli had killed one person and made at least 157 ill.

Farmers have stopped harvesting their spinach crops and supermarkets are no longer selling the vegetable traditionally known as a healthy food as investigators seek to find the source of the problem.

It was not clear if the child had eaten the spinach before or after officials warned against eating fresh spinach, Mason said.

So far, officials are concentrating on the Salinas Valley area of central California, which grows much of the nation’s spinach.

Provided by ArmMed Media
Revision date: June 14, 2011
Last revised: by Sebastian Scheller, MD, ScD