Hello it been a while we communicated on
our food ingredients hope our previous discussions has been helpful. We want to
continue today with another interesting topic on food borne illnesses.
Do you know food contamination
can occur in our kitchen and can lead to food borne illnesses? Let take a look
it.
Food borne illness
Food
borne illness is an illness caused by the
consumption of food contaminated by pathogenic
bacteria, viruses, parasites, natural toxins and chemicals. These organisms
have an incubation of 12-72 hours.
How do these organisms get onto our food to contaminate it?
Source
of raw materials: have you
thought of where you purchase your raw materials? How clean is that
environment?
Improper
handling of raw materials: fresh ingredients and
meat carry a number of disease causing organisms and should be properly cleaned
before cooking. Raw food contaminates a
ready-to-eat food when it comes into contact with it.
Freezing
and thawing food: Thawing frozen food in room
temperature is a sure bet for contamination.
Improper
cooking of food: Some microorganisms are destroyed
through high temperatures so improper cooking may not kill all these organisms.
Improper
handling of cooked food: When cooked foods are handled with unclean
hands the food can be contaminated.
Storage
of food: Storing foods below 0oC in
a refrigerator is not safe.
Poor
Personal Hygiene: contaminate when you don’t wash
hands well in between cooking can also contaminate your food.
Dirty
food contact surfaces: can contaminate
ready-to-eat food when it comes into contact
Pieces
of equipment: used for multiple foods without
cleaning and sanitizing between preparing foods.
I believe this discussion has been so educative and you have enjoyed it. We will continue in the next post.
