Resources

Cooking Schools Guide: Food Safety

On average, 16% of Americans come down with food poisoning each year, with about 100,00 ending up in the hospital or suffering from long-term health consequences. These illnesses are easy to prevent simply by observing a few easy rules about food safety.

Key principles

Food poisoning is a serious concern, but with just a few easy precautions, you can assure that your meal is always healthy and pathogen-free. There are four key principles to remember when it comes to food safety:

1. Clean: Wash everything! That means your hands (with warm water and soap, for at least 20 seconds), fresh vegetables or fruit (but not meat or poultry), and anything that might come into contact with your food. That means plates, utensils, cutting boards, and your counter—and don’t just rinse!
2. Separate: Meat, poultry, seafood and eggs have to be separate from other foods at all times. That means you should store them apart in the fridge, use different cutting boards, and even put them in different bags at the grocery store.
3. Cook: Use a thermometer to ensure that all meat is cooked to the correct temperature, keep food hot even after it’s been cooked (allowing it to cool gives bacteria a chance to grow), and always let microwaved food stand for the recommended amount of time so that the heat has a chance to distribute properly. Microwaved foods should reach 165° F—check with a thermometer!
4. Chill: Refrigerate perishable food items within two hours, never let food thaw at room temperature (bacteria love room temperature!), and always throw food out if you’ve had it too long or suspect it’s gone bad.

As long as you follow those four rules, you should be safe from food-borne pathogens. It wouldn’t hurt to also pay attention to food recalls, which must be publicly announced.

Place in Contemporary Diet

With the publicity surrounding food-borne pathogen outbreaks and panics in our modern society, it’s easy to think that our diet is worse than ever. In actuality, regulations surrounding food preparation and safety are better than ever. We have easy access to healthy, FDA-approved food sources, technology to preserve it safely and cook it thoroughly, and easy access to information about how to improve our food safety habits. Companies are subject to government oversight to ensure that they are following safety regulations, and the use of pesticides in agriculture is closely monitored. Additionally, lots of information is available on how to build a healthy, balanced diet. The US Department of Agriculture’s My Plate campaign is one example, with its easy-to-read guide to nutrition.

FDA & Other Regulatory Agencies

The United States has quite a bit of regulation surrounding food production, to ensure the health and safety of its citizens. President Obama founded a new advisory committee for food safety, the Food Safety Working Group, in 2009, and with their help has developed the Food Safety Modernization Act. The FSMA seeks to improve the US food safety regulations even more, to reduce the number of citizens falling victim to food poisoning each year.

Several agencies exist in the US to monitor food production. They are:

• The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
  Information about allergens, food-borne illness, retail food and more.
• The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
  Lots of information about food-borne illnesses, including recent outbreaks and how to avoid getting in their way.
• Food Safety.gov
  An easy-to-use website where all the necessary information about food safety regulation in the US can be found. They also have guidelines for preparing and storing food safely, charts for food storage, recent recalls and a list of common myths about food safety.
• Food Safety and Inspection Service
  A number of helpful fact sheets about food safety, and plenty of other resources as well.
• US Department of Agriculture
  A helpful brochure on how to tell when your meat has cooked properly.
• Internationally, there is also the World Health Organization (WHO).

Additional Resources

Food safety for kids:

• UC Davis: Food Safety Music
  A number of fun song parodies to help educate about food safety.
• North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services: Kid’s World
  A fun food safety guide designed with kids in mind.
• Every day food safety:
• FightBac.org
  A website dedicated to education about bacteria and how to protect your family from it. Includes a list of the most harmful pathogens.
• Home Food Safety.org
  Food safety advice on a wide range of topics, like how to manage food during a power outage and how to be safety-conscious while preparing food for a tailgating party. Sponsored by the American Dietetic Association (ADA).
• Be Food Safe.org
  A list of food retailers participating in the US government’s Be Food Safe program, sponsored by the Partnership for Food Safety Education.
• Bake Sale Food Safety
  A guide to making sure your bake sale is food safe, from Thurston County, WA.
• Minnesota Department of Health
  Advice about safe cooking on the go, among other resources.
• Iowa State University Extension: Food Safety
  Four food safety presentations from Iowa State University.
• Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences
  A number of helpful guides for storing and preserving food safely.
• Food Safety Magazine
  Online archive for Food Safety Magazine.
• University of Florida: Food Safety on the Farm
  A guide to proper handling of food in an agricultural setting.