Food hygiene at home

July 20, 2013 5:32 am

Contributed article from Edinburgh Community Food

Food hygiene isn’t very glamorous. It may not be something many of us think about very often but let me start off with a few facts and figures to see if they get your attention. In the UK there are annually 20,000 hospitalisations and sadly food poisoning and food borne illnesses cause 500 deaths. They also cost a lot of money: the economy suffers to the tune of £1.5 billion a year. As anyone who has been unlucky enough to have a case of food poisoning will know, it’s not exactly pleasant. Symptoms can range from the mild (a sore stomach for a few hours) to the fatal. While older people, the young and anyone with a compromised immune system are particularly susceptible, all of us are at risk. And here’s a further risk: most of us carry food poisoning bacteria with us all the time. Heard of MRSA? One in ten of us have it in our noses! So the risk is that, although we may feel fine, if our hygiene is poor we may pass things on to other people with weaker immune systems. That’s our babies, children and grandparents just for starters.

So what causes all this illness? Is it takeaway food? Was it that meal out last weekend when the chicken seemed a bit iffy? While undoubtedly many people do get food poisoning from takeaways and eating out the harsh fact is that we mostly do it to ourselves. 70% of cases are caused by us in our own kitchens!

What is at the root of all this? In a word: bacteria. The first thing we should understand is that bacteria are everywhere. They are in the air we breathe, the water we drink, they cover every surface we touch. In fact, we humans are covered in them. While each one of us is made up of 10 trillion cells we have 10 times that number of bacteria living on our skin and hair and in our digestive tracts. We are more bacteria than human! Most of these little bugs are, however, completely harmless; others are good for us. Some bacteria help us to digest our food and some even make vitamins for us in our intestines. There are only a few that can make us ill but of course it is these we need to watch out for. When we talk about food hygiene what we are trying to do is reduce the bacteria to a safe level – we can never get rid of all of them.

So, how can we keep ourselves and our families safe? There are three simple areas to look at. These are hand-washing, cross-contamination and temperatures.

What are high-risk foods? High-risk foods are foods that are ready to eat and high in protein and moisture. Bacteria love them and grow happily on them. The problem is that we don’t re-heat these foods before we eat them – so any bacteria present isn’t killed off. Examples include:

Ready to eat meat & poultry
Ready to eat dairy including cream
Ready to eat egg products including mayonnaise
Shellfish and molluscs
Soft cheeses
Pâtés
Cooked rice
Babyfood

Hand washing This may seem like a bit of an obvious one but our hands are one of the biggest sources of food poisoning bacteria – think of all the things we touch throughout the day! Regularly washing our hands can have a huge impact. In fact regular & thorough hand washing has had a huge effect on MRSA in hospitals. See the box-out for some ideas of when to wash.

Cross-contamination This is a bit of a technical term. What it means is when we transfer bacteria from contaminated foods (usually raw meat) to ready-to-eat food (anything you can eat straight from the fridge). Along with us humans, raw foods are one of the biggest sources of bacteria. For example, you are chopping up some raw chicken breasts ready to grill. You then use the same knife and chopping board to prepare the kids’ sandwiches for school. The sandwiches are now contaminated and the bacteria will happily grow into a big colony and make the children very ill. Make sure you thoroughly wash chopping boards, knives and hands after chopping raw meats!

To be safe any meat should have NO pink bits. Cut into it and have a look before you serve.

Temperatures Our best line of defence against food poisoning is cooking! While freezing foods only causes bacteria to go to sleep it is heat that kills them. Probe thermometers like the ones all restaurants use can be had for about £5. Fridge and freezer thermometers are even cheaper. Follow the temperatures in the box-out to make sure all the food you cook is safe! Once we’ve cooked our meal we should either serve it immediately (piping hot) or allow it to cool for a short while and then cover and refrigerate. Food hygiene professionals say we should get our food into the fridge within just 90 minutes. Any longer than that and the few surviving bacteria will multiply and re-contaminate the food. That curry that has been sitting on the bunker overnight? Don’t touch it!

Follow these temperatures to be safe!

Freezer – minus 18°C

Fridge – 1-4°C

Cooking – 75°C

Keeping food warm –63°C

Reheating – 82°C