How to Keep your Food Safe to Eat

Foods that are cooked with passion and served with love will taste divine. It is still true until today. All food enthusiasts are well aware that the soul of any good recipe will reside in the right blend of fresh natural ingredients and spices. However, you may, at times, miss upon an even more essential ingredient while cooking food, and these are more often tampering with the soul of your recipe. You need to be careful when you handle food and when you maintain the highest level of food safety and hygiene in your home and kitchen.

Food contamination may occur in any stage, regardless if it is preparation, processing, harvesting, transportation, or storage. There are diseases that you can get from dirty foods, which are usually common where low standards of hygiene are used. In accordance to the data that WHO released, yearly, there foodborne diseases are causing one out of ten people to be ill. These diseases may be deadly, particularly in children. 

Cleanliness (Washing hands and surfacing often) 

You need to wash your hands thoroughly with soap before you come in contact with food. This will eliminate the transfer of germs from your hands to the food. You need to wash all the fruits and vegetables with cold water before you use them. Kitchen surfaces and counters have been the key places where dirt can get the food contaminated. These areas should be thoroughly sanitized together with the equipment used to prepare food. 

In case you are sick or you are down with flu and cold, you need to avoid handling and cooking food. When a person has the symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea, or jaundice, he/she needs to stay away from the workplace. Furthermore, if they have a fever or sore throat, he/she must be restricted from serving and preparing food. It is alarming because these people may possibly have spread disease to those who consume the foods that they are serving. 

Separation (Not cross contaminating) 

In order to prevent cross contamination of food and keep it raw and cooked, you should separate them during preparation and storing. Food must be stored in the covered containers in the fridge, putting raw poultry and raw meats in the bottom of the fridge in order for the juices not to get the food contaminated on lower shelves. You should not put cooked meat back on the plate where the raw meat has been on. 

Cooking (To the right temperature) 

If you are eating seafood, poultry, and meat, you have to be careful when cooking them. These foods must be cooked thoroughly at the right temperature before eating. To confirm, you need to insert a skewer in the center of the meat, checking that there would be no pink meat. The juices need ot run clear, as these are the signs of meats that are well cooked.