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Food Safety: Strategies for Families1
Amy Simonne and Donna Davis2Living in Europe many years ago, I remember being struck by the instruction to wash all our fresh fruits and vegetables in Clorox® before we ate them! Yuck! Did we want to take the risk of consuming germs or eating dangerous by-products of bleach? Neither one was very appetizing. My mom opted for germs and apparently we survived.
With so many options for consumers at the grocery store or your favorite farmer's market, how can you know that your food is safe? Consumers can avoid foodborne illness by following a few simple recommendations: wash your hands, clean food contact surfaces often, wash fruits and vegetables (no bleach necessary), and don't wash meat or poultry. Separate raw, cooked, and ready-to-eat foods while shopping, preparing or storing foods. Also, cook foods to a safe temperature to kill microorganisms, using a food thermometer. A list of safe cooking tempeatures for meat, poultry, fish, etc., can be found at the USDA web site (http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/How_Temperatures_Affect_Food/index.asp ) or at your local county Extension service.
Other important steps to insure food safety include refrigerating perishable foods promptly and defrosting foods properly. Consumers need to also understand that new food safety information is constantly emerging. Recommendations and precautions, particularly for people at high risk, are updated as scientists understand more about preventing foodborne illness.
Listening, learning, and living together: it's the science of life. "Family Album" is a co-production of University of Florida IFAS Extension, the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences and of WUFT-FM. If you'd like to learn more, please visit our Web site at http://www.familyalbumradio.org .
To listen to the radio broadcast:
http://www.radiosource.net/radio_stories/SFF.mp3
http://www.radiosource.net/radio_stories/SFF.wav
Footnotes
1. This document is FAR8701, one of a series of the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. First published December 2007. In the interest of time or clarity, the broadcast version of this script may have been modified. Please visit the EDIS Web site at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu.2. Amy Simonne, associate professor, and Donna Davis, Senior Producer, Family Album Radio, Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611.
The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) is an Equal Opportunity Institution authorized to provide research, educational information and other services only to individuals and institutions that function with non-discrimination with respect to race, creed, color, religion, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, political opinions or affiliations. For more information on obtaining other extension publications, contact your county Cooperative Extension service.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Florida, IFAS, Florida A. & M. University Cooperative Extension Program, and Boards of County Commissioners Cooperating. Larry Arrington, Dean.
Copyright Information
This document is copyrighted by the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) for the people of the State of Florida. UF/IFAS retains all rights under all conventions, but permits free reproduction by all agents and offices of the Cooperative Extension Service and the people of the State of Florida. Permission is granted to others to use these materials in part or in full for educational purposes, provided that full credit is given to the UF/IFAS, citing the publication, its source, and date of publication.