Food Hygiene Training – The Basics – SHOPPING
No one want to get sick from eating food and no one wants to cause that sickness.
It’s often tough to identify the source of a food bourne illness. Food may start in a field, be picked, transported, processed in a plant, trucked out, handled at the supermarket level, handled by other supermarket customers and then handled by you. There are many opportunities for contamination to happen and it could happen during any of these steps. Any food can be compromised, but the higher risk foods are raw fish, shellfish, raw sprouts, red meats, poultry, eggs, cheese and any dairy product. That covers most of our staple foods.
This article will cover the basics of SHOPPING for food & being safe about it.
1. Use your common sense and don’t buy anything that looks questionable. If the package is dented in, leaking or looks different than all of the others, don’t buy it. If the veggies look past their prime, they probably are. Be especially careful in the proteins section of the store.
2. Look at the ’sell by’ and ‘use by’ dates. Don’t buy anything that is past the date or approaching the use by date unless you plan on using it right away. Check out the difference in date between the product at the front and the product at the back. If the supermarket is stocking correctly the fresher items will be at the back of the shelf. If there is a “Managers Special” sticker on the package, check it very carely for dates and other deal breaker signs. It usually means they are going to have to throw it away soon so they’re trying to blow it out of there even at minimal profit. It’s likely fine to eat at that moment, but a lot of times those items have that day or the next day on the ‘use by’ or ’sell by’ dates. If it’s still in the store at that point, either they ordered too much or it’s just not a populare item. Either way, beware.
3. When buying the items that people grab by hand, try to buy the ones in the location least likely to be touched. The eye level portion of the pile of apples might have apples that have been handled by MANY people, with who knows what on their hands.
4. If you have a long drive home from the supermarket, make sure you buy the perishable items LAST. That way they have less time out of refrideration/freezer. Make sure the perishables aren’ t placed in a hot trunk for the drive home. They need the A/C just like you do in the summer.
5. Just don’t buy anything that looks or smells gross. Obviously.
Filed Under Family, Food Handling Basics, Shopping | Leave a Comment
Tagged With deal breaker, food bourne illness, food contamination, food shopping, product rotation, sell by date, supermarket food handling, use by date
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