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Becoming a Healthier You means knowing how to prepare, handle, and store
food safely. Follow these tips to keep you and your family safe:
- Clean hands, food-contact surfaces,
fruits, and vegetables. To avoid spreading
bacteria to other foods, meat and poultry
should not be washed or rinsed.
(Splashing water while rinsing meat and
poultry may cause cross-contamination.)
- Separate raw, cooked, and ready-to-eat
foods while shopping, preparing, or
storing.
- Cook meat, poultry and fish to safe internal
temperatures to kill microorganisms.
- Chill (refrigerate) perishable foods promptly
and thaw/defrost foods properly.
For infants and young children, pregnant women, older adults, and those with
weakened immune systems:
- Do not eat or drink raw (unpasteurized) milk or any product made from
unpasteurized milk, raw or partially cooked eggs or food containing raw eggs,
raw or undercooked meat and poultry, unpasteurized juices, and raw sprouts.
Pregnant women, older adults, and those with weakened immune systems:
- Only eat certain deli meats and frankfurters that have been reheated to
steaming hot.
For safe cooking and handling of food—know that bacteria multiply rapidly between
40°F and 140°F, doubling in number in as little as 20 minutes. To keep food out of
this danger zone, keep cold food cold and hot food hot. Keep food cold in the refrigerator,
in coolers, or on the service line on ice. Set your refrigerator no higher than 40°F
and the freezer at 0°F. Keep food hot in the oven, in heated chafing dishes, or in
pre-heated steam tables, warming trays, and/or slow cookers. Use a clean thermometer
that measures the internal temperature of cooked food to make sure meats, poultry,
and casseroles are cooked to the temperatures as indicated in the figure.
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