How to keep food clean to avoid disease

Cooking activities are fun. Starting from the cooking process to eating it. However, did you know that the kitchen can be a place for the spread of disease? Especially diseases related to food or commonly referred to as food borne disease. This can happen if the food you process is contaminated with bacteria, viruses, or parasites. As a result, you can experience poisoning characterized by diarrhea, vomiting, or fever. This is the importance of keeping your food and kitchen clean. Here are tips for maintaining cleanliness in the kitchen while cooking that you can cheat.

1. Wash hands with soap

Before you touch food or groceries, you need to wash your hands with soap, especially after touching raw food, trash cans, pets, and going to the toilet. It is important to do this to ensure that your hands are free of germs before cooking or eating.

Harmful bacteria can spread very easily from hands to food and cooking utensils. In addition to washing your hands to ensure hand hygiene, you can use plastic gloves when cooking. Especially if you have a cold or diarrhea.

When you sneeze or cough suddenly while cooking, you need to cover your mouth and nose. If you cover it by hand, you will need to wash your hands again with soap. If you do have the flu, you need to READ ALSO: The Importance of Wearing a Mask When the Flu while cooking to avoid spreading viruses that cause coughs and colds to the food you prepare.

2. Wash fruits and vegetables

Washing fruits and vegetables in cold water before you process them, including peeling fruits and vegetables, can help remove the dirt on these foods. Wash fruits and vegetables under clean running water for a few minutes before preparing or serving them.

3. Separate foods that are easily contaminated with bacteria or viruses

Food items such as raw meat including poultry can contain harmful bacteria that spread easily on anything they touch. Moreover, food and cooking equipment such as knives, cutting boards, and others. Therefore, you need to separate raw food ingredients, especially raw meat from ready-to-eat foods to avoid cross-contamination.

Tips:

If possible, use separate cutting boards or chopping boards for raw meat and other food items.
Wash cutting boards, dishes, and cooking utensils with soap and water after coming in contact with raw meat, poultry, or seafood.
Never place cooked food on a plate that has recently been used to use raw meat, poultry, or seafood.

4. Cook with the right temperature

To ensure food hygiene, certain types of ingredients need to be cooked at the right temperature in order to kill harmful bacteria. Here are some temperature rules for cooking food according to the health site WebMD.

Roast meat and grill at least 62 degrees Celsius.
All poultry (chicken, turkey, duck) should be cooked to 73 degrees Celsius.
Cook the beef to at least 71 degrees Celsius.
Cook the eggs until the yolks and whites are cooked.

5. Store food in the refrigerator

Putting food in the refrigerator can prevent bacteria from growing and growing in food. Set the temperature of your refrigerator so that it is no warmer than 4 degrees Celsius freezer not warmer than -17 degrees Celsius.

Tips:

Refrigerate or freeze perishable foods, prepared foods, and leftovers.
Never thaw chilled or frozen food at room temperature. If you wish to do so, you can soak the food in water in the refrigerator, under cold air, or in microwave.
Keep the refrigerator from getting too full, to ensure that the cold air of the refrigerator is distributed optimally.

6. When is it okay to throw food away?

You can discard food you intend to cook if you are not sure how long the food has been stored, it smells bad, or looks different than it should. Also discard packaged foods that are past the product expiration date.

Likewise, if cooked food has been mixed with raw food. This is done to maintain food hygiene while avoiding bacterial infections that cause disease.