It has been a busy couple of weeks for the recall notices. In early September, Made Fresh Salads, Inc. of Bay Shore, New York pulled its entire deli lineup — 43 ready-to-eat deli salads and 27 cream cheese flavors sold under the Made Fresh Salads and Northside brands — after the FDA flagged possible Listeria monocytogenes contamination. Around the same time, Reser's Fine Foods recalled tuna salad sold in seven states over a listeria risk traced to contaminated breadcrumbs. And the CDC is still running an active salmonella investigation tied to broccoli sprouts, which we've covered here before.
If your fridge has a deli drawer, this one is worth two minutes of your time — especially if you live in the New York area, and especially if a stomach bug would hit you where it already hurts.
According to the FDA recall notice, the Made Fresh Salads recall covers ready-to-eat potato, pasta, seafood, and grain salads plus cream cheeses, distributed to retail stores and distributors in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and the wider New York City area. The affected products carry expiration dates from September 3 through September 18, 2026, printed on the bottom left of the label. No illnesses have been reported so far, which is exactly when you want to catch these things.
If you have any of it: don't taste-test it to check. Return it for a refund or throw it out, and give the shelf it sat on a wipe-down — listeria is one of the few bacteria that keeps growing at fridge temperatures.
Most healthy adults who ingest listeria get something that feels like a rough stomach bug: fever, headache, nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. But for pregnant women, adults over 65, young children, and anyone with a weakened immune system, listeria can turn into an invasive infection that is genuinely dangerous — in pregnancy it can cause miscarriage or stillbirth. That's why recalls like this get the aggressive treatment even with zero illnesses reported.
One more quirk: symptoms can show up days or even weeks after eating the contaminated food, so people rarely connect the dots on their own. If you ate a recalled product and develop fever, muscle aches, or GI symptoms, call your doctor. Diagnosing a foodborne infection takes actual lab testing, and treatment — especially for higher-risk groups — is a medical decision, not a home-remedy situation. Nothing on this site treats or prevents listeriosis, salmonella, or any other infection.
Here's where our corner of the health world comes in. Any illness that puts you on the toilet eight times a day is rough on the tissue down there. Repeated bowel movements, urgency, straining, and the wiping marathon that comes with them all irritate hemorrhoids — and can wake up ones you thought were long gone. For plenty of people, the infection clears in a few days but the flare-up it triggered hangs around for a week or more.
If a GI bug has your hemorrhoids inflamed, the playbook is about gentleness and symptom relief while your body sorts itself out:
Beyond tossing recalled items, the boring advice holds: keep ready-to-eat deli foods cold, eat them within a few days of opening, and check the FDA's recall list when a story like this makes the news. Pregnant readers and anyone over 65 should be choosier about deli salads and soft spreads in general — this category shows up in listeria recalls again and again.
Stay safe, check the drawer, and if your gut takes a hit this month, at least your hemorrhoids don't have to suffer through it unmanaged.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. If you suspect a foodborne infection or have persistent or severe symptoms, see a doctor.