Garden City Food Expo: HOW TO PRACTICE FOOD HYGIENE AT HOME

 HOW TO PRACTICE FOOD HYGIENE AT HOME

Garden City Food Expo
 

First of all Practice Good Personal Hygiene. Garden City Food Expo supports that personal hygiene is a practice everyone should have. It is important to always wash your hands with soap and water before handling food to prepare.

Clean Utensils and Cooking Equipment

All cooking equipment should be properly cleaned and sanitised before starting any preparation. This is specifically important for equipment that comes into direct contact with food. Such as cutting boards, knives, countertops, mixers, blenders etc. These areas are known to harbour dangerous bacteria that when they get into foods that cause serious illness. All utensils and crockery need to be cleaned fro the same reasons.

Garden City Food Expo outlines positive tips to promote food Hygiene in your Home

★Keep Foods That Need to be Kept Cold in the Fridge:

Raw meats, dairy and others need to be kept cold (4°C – 39°F) in order to prevent bacteria from growing before you can consume the food. Keeping foods cold also ensures that your food does not expire before the use-by dates.

★Separate Raw and Ready to Eat Foods

By its very nature, raw foods have bacteria present in them. This is why we need to cook most of our foods. There is no way you can keep cooked foods together with the raw. Foods such as meat, fish and fruits, soup and stew should be refrigerated/frozen in different sealed containers and they should be kept in a different compartment of the fridge to avoid cross-contamination which can occur through dripping.

After marinating fish or meat, do not use the same bowl or plate to serve food or place another food into it, you can only use the sauce to cook food but not to serve as food because it is raw and it will be unhealthy for your consumption.

★Wash Fruits and Vegetables Before Use

Most fruits and vegetable are freshly purchased from the farm, store or market; these foods contain soil, insects and chemical residues in them, it is very important to rinse vegetables and fruit with water, salt or vinegar before storing them in the food rack.

★Use Appropriate Kitchen Tools for Food Preparation 

There are various kinds of kitchen tools/utensils designed for different purposes, make sure you use the right tool at the right time. For instance, a meat chopping board can easily serve as a growth medium for bacteria and mould, this can be seen growing on the surface or the edges if not properly washed after usage, use a different chopping board for cutting vegetables and other sensitive foods to prevent food poisoning and always wash and disinfect cutting tools.

★Keep Dry Foods Separate From Liquids

 Food safety should include dry goods such as grains, dried and powdered foods storage. Wet food attracts moulds easily. Grains, powdered, baked, and canned or dry foods should be properly stored away from liquid, as moulds can easily grow on them causing illness, allergy and food poisoning to both adults and kids.

★Cook Food to an Appropriate Temperature  

Cooking food to the required temperature is an important food safety practice, as raw foods like egg and meat can easily result in Salmonella and E. coli infections if not properly cooked. Foods such as pork, chicken, beef and processed meats like sausage should be cooked longer until there are no traces of pink on the flesh and joints and bones of such meats because bacteria can easily survive the cooking process in these areas.

★Keep Insects and Pests Away From Food Areas

Insects and pests control is another important food hygiene tip to be taken into consideration, as these creatures are often seen in our houses, especially in places like the fridge corners, kitchen cupboard, shelves and at dark corners of the kitchen. Cockroaches, flies and rodents as we know are very terrible insects and pest; they can carry pathogens from one surface to another, which can lead to food-borne illness, for this reason, it is wise to always cover the pots containing foods, spray the shelves, clean our refrigerator when you notice any foul smell and dripping.

★Always Use Clean Water to Prepare Food  

Food hygiene is also an important practice to be carried out when washing, mixing and cooking food. Water has many ways of affecting our systems and our general health. Foods that are prepared with unsafe water can easily lead to vomiting, diarrhoea and stomach upsets, it is important to always use clean water to wash and cook food.

★Clean the Kitchen and Mop the Floor After Each Food Preparation: 

How About Kitchen cleaning Garden City Food Expo Explains;

Keeping the kitchen clean can help keep flies, ants and cockroaches from coming in contact with your foods. Greasy areas help bacteria hide and cannot be eliminated without removing the grease. The stove or gas top should be properly wiped.

Keep Kitchen Towels, Sponges and Cleaning Cloths Clean and Replace Regularly

The kitchen and every tool or equipment in it should be washed and sanitised. Kitchen towels or sponges are very important items in the kitchen and are used on a daily basis to open hot lids, to remove foods from the microwave or oven, to bring down boiling soup from heat and to wipe off food or water from our wet hands. Often times while using these towels, they get wet in the process which means that microorganisms can harbour on these damp surfaces, so it will be very proper to wash and sanitise and properly.

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