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.
