Featuring Food Safety - Week 1

Did you know one in six people in the United States gets sick from food in any given year? While some foodborne illnesses simply subject you to a temporary affinity for your toilet bowl, others can have more severe consequences such as kidney failure and even death.

September is Food Safety Education month. In order to help you protect yourself and your loved ones from foodborne illnesses, the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN) in the University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (AGNR) will provide weekly food safety tips. This week, we present:

CLEAN, SEPARATE, COOK AND CHILL: It’s super simple and can help keep you healthy. First, let’s get real and remember the often-overlooked fact that before it reaches the grocery store, food is actually an agricultural product.  For produce, that means it grew in dirt, was possibly fertilized with composted animal manure and watered with well water. It was picked, placed in a box and may have been sent to a plant to be washed and put in bags and boxes before being shipped again. At the grocery store, a nice clerk placed the produce on the shelf where a ton of people “tested” every piece of fruit before choosing the perfect apple for the next day’s lunch.

CLEAN: OK, so now we can all agree that fresh fruits and vegetables need to be cleaned. Simply rinse the produce under running warm water. That’s right, just warm water. No soap, detergent or fancy cleaner necessary. You’re not trying to get a stain out. You’re just removing particles off the surface of your food. For rough vegetables, a brush can help get rid of all the dirt. By the way, go ahead and wash your hands while you’re at the sink.  

SEPARATE: This starts when you shop. Place meats in a separate bag from fruits and vegetables to help prevent cross-contamination of produce that will be eaten raw. In addition, keeping all the cold and frozen meats together will help them stay cold until you put them in your refrigerator. Then, maintain that separation inside your refrigerator. Those nifty little drawers labeled “meat” and “produce” do more than keep the perfect level of humidity for food products. They keep things separated. If you don’t have drawers in your fridge, always store meats on the lowest level possible so meat juices won’t accidentally spill onto your fruits and veggies.

COOK: This one’s probably the easiest to grasp. Always cook meats and pre-cooked foods that are meant to be cooked. By the way, eating raw hot dogs can result in listeriosis. Go ahead, Google that word and we guarantee you’ll always cook your hot dogs until steam comes out.

CHILL: Finally, chill your leftovers as soon as you’re done eating. Your food hasn’t been sterilized so it contains organisms that WILL multiply if placed in favorable conditions.

CLEAN, SEPARATE, COOK and CHILL: It’s easy! Stay tuned for more food safety tips throughout the month of September brought to you by JIFSAN and the College of AGNR!

For more information on JIFSAN, visit http://jifsan.umd.edu.

For more information on the College of AGNR, go to www.agnr.umd.edu.