4 Food Safety Tips Everyone Should Know

If you take driving safety seriously, you should take food safety just as seriously. Unless you are a professional driver, you probably spend less time driving than eating on your average day.

In a typical year, roughly one out of every six Americans gets food poisoning. That's about 48 million people. 

In most cases, it will be minor and they will recover on their own. But, more than 100,000 Americans end up needing medical care every year due to food borne illnesses. Some of them will have permanent adverse health effects and about 3000 people die every year. About 88 percent of such deaths are caused by just five organisms.

1. Keep It Clean
Food safety begins with cleanliness. The culprit here is bacteria that can grow on your hands, kitchen surfaces and on the things you consume. You want to wash your hands both before and after handling items. You need to also wash cutting boards, knives and other utensils. Kitchen counters, sinks, pots and pots and pans also need to be kept clean. 

Anything that can come in contact with the things you eat needs to be kept as germ-free as possible. Otherwise, those germs will get consumed when you eat and you can get sick from them, potentially very sick. You should wash produce, in other words fruits and vegetables. You should not wash poultry, meat or eggs.

2. Handle With Care
Meat, poultry, seafood and eggs are the primary source of dangerous bacteria. They need be kept separate from produce and other items from the start. This means you need to keep them separate while shopping at the grocery store. It means you need to keep them separate in the refrigerator. It also means you should have separate cutting boards for meats and produce. 

Produce or ready-to-eat items, like bread or snacks, tend to not grow the bacteria in question, but they can become contaminated due to exposure at the store or at home. It is important that poultry, seafood, meat and eggs be kept separate from other edibles at all times.

3. Cook It Properly
The Danger Zone is above 40 degrees and below 140 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the range in which bacteria thrive and multiply. In cool weather, you can only keep items for up to two hours in this temperature range. In hot weather, above 90 degrees, you window of safety is a mere hour. In order to be safe to eat, things need to be cooked thoroughly and kept above 140 degrees until served. A thermometer is the best way to make sure items have been properly cooked. 

4. Keep It Chill
If you aren't cooking it or eating it, you should be keeping it cold. This means it needs to be refrigerated or frozen. There are no exceptions. It isn't okay to marinate meats on the kitchen counter at room temperature, nor to defrost them this way.

If you are marinating meat, keep it in the refrigerator while doing so. Thaw items over night in the refrigerator or quick thaw in the microwave or in a Ziploc bag left in a bowl or sink of water. Warm water can thaw items rapidly for prompt cooking.

When you get home from grocery shopping, cold items need to be put away promptly. After a meal is done, leftovers also need to be put in the refrigerator within one to two hours, depending upon the ambient temperature. In hot summer months, you have less wiggle room on this.

You are what you eat, and if it contains high levels of infectious bacteria, what you can be is seriously ill. Make sure to keep it safe by keeping everything in the kitchen clean, keeping meat, fish, poultry and eggs separate from other produce and other items, cooking everything properly and chilling everything both properly and promptly.

Tips to Find the Tastiest Ways to Eat Healthy

As you get older, eating healthy becomes increasingly important. A lot of people view this as a dreaded chore and see it as the end of enjoying food, but it doesn't have to be that way. You can continue to enjoy food, even while learning to up your game nutritionally.

1) Learn to Shop
Learn how to choose good quality produce. Many fruits and veggies taste good raw or with minimum preparation, assuming they are of good quality to begin with. Melons can often be checked by feeling how firm the rind is. Generally speaking, the flesh of berries and other fruits should be firm, but not hard. If you aren't good at this, ask a friend to teach you all about it.

2) Learn to Store Food Properly
Fresh produce is best if consumed fairly promptly, but if you don't shop daily, you need to learn to store it so it stays fresh. Rinse fruits and vegetables before putting them in the fridge to remove any pesticide residue. Grapes should be pulled off the stem before being put away. Celery should be placed in a glass of water to keep it crisp. Bananas should be hung from a hook to forestall spoilage. Apples should be stored separately from other items because they give off a gas that can hasten spoilage for some items.

3) Learn to Stir Fry
Stir fry involves cutting foods up into relatively small pieces -- because small pieces cook quickly -- and cooking them on high heat for a short period of time. If you aren't a fan of oriental foods, you do not have to eat anything you find weird. You can use the same technique to make familiar foods healthier because stir frying involves less oil and less exposure to heat, thus helping to preserve nutrients and reduce the amount of fat in your diet. If you adapt familiar recipes to a stir fry version, you can improve your nutrition and cut fat from your diet without making big changes to the kinds of foods you like to eat.

4) Learn to Spice
Generally speaking, most healthy diets require you to cut fat and sugar. These are both big sources of flavor for many people. Learning to use spices can help add flavor to your diet so you don't miss the fats and sugars so much. Stir fry some sweet potato slices with cinnamon and nutmeg and you may be happy with just a pinch of brown sugar instead of a spoonful. Add onions, chives or black pepper to your baked potato and you may be less grumpy about cutting back on the butter, cheese and bacon.

Contrary to popular opinion, eating healthy does not have to be a fate worse than death. If you learn to up your game on food selection, storage, and preparation, it is possible to not only enjoy healthy foods, but to enjoy them even more than low quality junk food while also doing your body some good.

Finding the Right Food Plan and What it Means for You

We have all heard that eating right and getting enough exercise are the keys to maintaining a healthy weight and staying healthy in general. Rather than simply going on a crash diet plan or deciding that you are going to only eat a select few foods, the way to make sure you are starting out with a sustainable eating plan. While one of the reasons you may be considering ways to improve your diet is that you want to lose weight, there are also many other health benefits of sticking with healthy eating, such as higher energy levels, improved overall mood and lowering your risk for many preventable diseases.

When you are picking the right food plan, you need to do more than simply figure out the unhealthy foods to eliminate from your diet. In addition to this, you need to find the specific foods that will boost your nutrient intake and help you fight off cravings throughout the day. As you find foods to eliminate, make sure to replace them with healthy, low-calorie alternatives. Along with eliminating unhealthy foods, you should pay attention to your portion control. Eating too much of relatively healthy foods can still contribute to weight gain. If you need help with portion control, you can try preparing your meals ahead of time using containers with the correct proportion sizes for your needs.

You should also think about your daily schedule and ask yourself if you are eating at the right times during the day. For example, if you are skipping breakfast every day and then snacking before lunch, this could be an opportunity to adjust your meal time and save on unhealthy calories. One of the best methods for portion control and a healthy eating schedule is to make sure that you eat breakfast during the day and then consume more frequent, smaller-sized meals rather than a massive lunch and dinner. Another cardinal rule is to avoid eating late at night because your metabolism will be slower.

While everyone may have different specific nutrient needs, a good general rule of thumb is to reduce the amount of sugar that you are eating during the day. Consider replacing sugary drinks with water and sugary foods with fruit as healthier alternatives. This will also help you stay fuller longer and avoid snacking on unhealthy choices in between meals. If you need a good transition from sugary drinks like soda to water, try switching to unsweetened iced tea first.

What Foods Boost Immune System

Fighting colds and flus doesn't have to be a yearly experience when you eat the proper foods. Explore some particular superfoods that actually boost your immune system and keep you healthy.

Your immune system is always ready for a fight as foreign cells enter your body on a daily basis. White-blood cells lead the charge as they try to balance the body into a healthy homeostasis. As you grow older, however, fighting off germs becomes difficult. There are some foods that you can eat, which will strengthen your immune system through enhanced vitamin resources.

Orange-Colored Produce

Molecular compounds called carotenoids are found in produce that's bright orange. Keep a healthy stock of sweet potatoes, carrots and squash in the house because the carotenoids within each of these items turns into vitamin A as the digestive system breaks them down. Your body uses this vitamin in an antioxidant capacity, which fights off infection as foreign cells invade your body. Other produce, such as pumpkin, is also rich in carotenoids. Simply look for colors as you shop, and adding vitamin A to your diet will be simple.

Oysters

Oysters can be a secret weapon against sickness because they hold countless nutrients. Their main offering is zinc, which tends to calm inflammation down. When the body becomes inflamed, certain areas are so swollen that fighting off infection is often difficult. By reducing the inflammation, zinc allows the immune response to be more centralized to the foreign body. You also gain omega-3 fatty acids, protein and calcium from oysters. All of these essential nutrients improve the body's response to germs as it recovers from almost any sickness.

Citrus

Although no foods can actually prevent sickness, citrus comes close to that ultimate dream. The vitamin C hidden within this food helps the body form defenses against invading germs. Scientists don't know exactly how vitamin C works for the immune system, but it seems to boost white-blood cells' strength against colds and flus. Try oranges, lemons and limes in your daily diet in order to achieve the best effects.

Bananas

Vitamin B6 and potassium are both found in bananas. The vitamin alone is reason enough to eat at least one banana each day because it helps your body with hundreds of critical biochemical reactions. With cells that can react with ferocity, those invading germs can be killed off before they reproduce into huge numbers.

Chicken

Get your fill of lean chicken cuts because they're rich in iron. This element is crucial to oxygen transport around the body. Without oxygen permeating your tissues, the immune system becomes weakened and allows germs to invade. Consider a chicken-based meal twice a week in order to gain the most iron out of this cut.

If fresh foods are hard to find at certain times of year, head toward the freezer aisle at the local grocery store. Frozen fruits, meats and vegetables have the same nutritional values as the items in the produce or meat sections. By being creative with your eating habits, the immune system can win out against almost any invader.