Food Safety at Home
Eating spoiled food can make you sick. Food can be spoiled even if it looks
and smells all right. Germs cause food to go bad. You can't see, smell, or
feel germs. It takes one to three days to get sick from eating spoiled food.
If you get sick, get help. Call your doctor or your local health department.
There are four easy ways to keep food from going bad:
- Clean
- Keep apart
- Cook
- Chill
Clean: Wash hands and counters often
Germs can spread in the kitchen. They can get onto cutting boards, counters,
sponges, forks, spoons, and knives. Here's how to fight germs:
- Wash your hands with hot, soapy water. Do this before touching food.
Do it after using the bathroom, changing diapers, or touching pets.
- Wash your cutting boards, counters, dishes, forks,
spoons, and knives. Use hot, soapy water. Do this after working with each food item.
- Use paper towels to clean up kitchen counters and
tables. If you use
cloth towels, wash them often in the hot cycle of the washing machine or
in hot soapy water.
Keep apart: Keep raw foods to themselves
Germs can spread from one food product
to another.
- Keep raw meat, poultry, seafood and their juices away from
other foods.
- Keep these foods away from each other in your shopping cart and in
your fridge.
- Use a special cutting board for raw meat only.
- Wash your hands after touching raw meat, poultry, or seafood. Wash
cutting boards, dishes, forks, spoons, and knives that touch these foods.
Use hot, soapy water.
- When you use a plate for raw meat, poultry, or seafood, don't put any
other food on it until you wash it.
Cook: Make sure food is very hot
Foods need to get hot and stay hot when you cook them. Heat kills germs.
- Use a clean cooking thermometer. This handy tool tells you how hot
a food gets inside. It helps you to know when foods are cooked all the way.
Use it for meat, poultry, and other foods.
- Cook roasts and steaks to at least 145 degrees F. Whole poultry should
reach 180 degrees F.
- Cook ground beef to at least 160 degrees F.
- Cook eggs until the yolks and whites are firm. Don't use recipes in
which eggs remain raw or are partly cooked. Cooked fish should flake
easily with a fork.
- Be careful if you use a microwave oven. Make sure that the food has
no cold spots. Cold spots let germs live. Cover the food and stir it for
even cooking. Rotate the dish once or twice while cooking.
- Bring sauces, soups and gravies to a boil when you reheat them. Heat
other leftovers well, too. Leftovers should reach 165 degrees F.
Chill: Put food in the fridge right away
Set your fridge to 40 degrees F or colder. The cold helps slow the growth
of germs in food. The freezer unit should read 0 degrees F. Check the readings
once a month with a fridge thermometer.
- Put all cooked food and leftovers food in the fridge or freezer within
two hours.
- Never thaw food by simply taking it out of the fridge! There are three
safe ways to thaw food:
- in the fridge
- under cold running water
- in the microwave
- Marinate foods in the fridge.
- Divide large amounts of leftovers. Put them into small, shallow dishes
with covers. That way, they can cool quickly in the fridge.
- Don't pack the fridge too full. The cool air must flow freely to keep
food safe.
To learn more:
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Meat and Poultry Hotline
1-800-535-4555
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Food Information Hotline
1-800-SAFE
FOOD
Partnership for Food Safety Education
www.fightbac.org
www.foodsafety.gov
2006