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Food Safety Tips from a 150 Year Old Expert

December 9, 2016

Andrew Eccles, Nestlé in the United States

Nestlé has been around for a while now – 150 years in fact – so we’ve learned a thing or two about food safety. We also make sure we keep our work as fresh as we keep our food, which is why we refurbished our Nestle Quality Assurance Center in Dublin, Ohio this year.

While we test everything from the soil food grows in to the packaging it’s delivered in, we understand that you can’t go to such lengths at home, nor do you need to.  A few simple ideas make a huge difference when it comes to protecting your safety – we already shared some of those ideas during the Story of Your Dinner twitter chat, and enjoyed hearing tips from other experts too.

With that in mind, we’re grateful to FightBAC for giving us the opportunity to share some tips straight from our kitchen to yours.

nestle-tomatos

We always source the best ingredients for everything we make. You can do the same when you’re cooking. Remember to make sure any food you’re using is safely within its “use by” date, and give fruit and vegetables a good rinse with clean running water before you eat or cook them.

Another way to take care of food is to make sure you’ve stored it properly. Check whether your groceries are best kept in the fridge, in an air tight container, or frozen. It’s also a good idea to store raw foods separate from ready-to-eat food, especially raw poultry, meat, and seafood.

Remember to keep up this separation when you start cooking. A different knife should be used for raw chicken than for vegetables, for example.  In our kitchens at Nestlé, we use dedicated equipment for different ingredients to prevent cross-contamination.

If you’re cooking for friends, check if anyone has allergies well in advance! We provide allergen warnings on our food packaging, but chances are that you’re not labeling each dish on your table.

Sending out a quick message before you’ve planned your menu will give you plenty of time to plan delicious meals that aren’t an allergen risk for any of your guests.

nestle-dinner-table

Correct cooking isn’t just about taste and, if you’ll excuse the term, mouthfeel – it’s also about safety. Cooking to a safe temperature kills dangerous microorganisms. The difference between a dangerous raw piece of meat and a delicious cut is the application of the correct heat. Too little heat, microorganisms survive. Too much heat, you can destroy nutrients. Always check the correct cooking method and temperature.

Finally, it sounds pretty basic, but remember to wash your hands. Our hands touch lots of surfaces all day and pick up an array of bacteria and other nasty substances…you don’t want that on your food! Keep them clean.

Cooking and eating should be an enjoyable experience. Remembering these basics will keep your body as happy as your taste buds!

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Fight BAC, FightBac, food safety, holidays, Nestlé, storyofyourdinner

Story of Your Dinner is a Hit in West Virginia!

November 30, 2016

Elaine Tiller, Nutrition Outreach Instructor with the West Virginia Family Nutritionelaine-tiller-head-shot Program in Princeton knows her way around a food safety class.

Raising Awareness of Home Food Safety Steps
She found the Story of Your Dinner video (storyofyourdinner.org) to be an effective tool for raising awareness of the food safety steps needed at home to keep family meals safe. Elaine offers Eating Smart Being Active classes through West Virginia University Extension. Her program targets adults with limited resources who are parents with children in Head Start. She also teaches a class to vocational high school seniors.

Video Hits the Mark
Elaine used the Story of Your Dinner pre-and post-video viewing evaluations to assess the success of the presentation. Viewers learned they shouldn’t rinse chicken before cooking it. It also reinforced the importance of hand washing before and after handling food—steps Elaine reviews in her classes also.

Other Story of Your Dinner resources were popular with the class participants as well. The placemats were a hit, and the recipes with food safety instructions were approved for use in classes by the staff supervisor, an RD. Elaine intends to use them in future cooking classes.

Thermometers Bring Food Safety Homeelaine-tiller-sink-those-germs
Class participants receive their own instant read food thermometer to use at home, along with a FightBAC temperature chart which Elaine downloads from the website, laminates, and adds a magnet to. This way class participants can hang it right in their kitchen- handy for when using their new food thermometer!

“Sink Those Germs!”
For teaching the kids- Elaine developed the “Sink those Germs” game for health fairs. She uses a “sink” made from a dish pan with an added a spigot and bean bag “germs”. Children are quizzed on when they are supposed to wash their hands and when they answer correctly, they toss those nasty germs (bean bags) into the “sink” and down the drain.

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Fight BAC, Food handling, food safety, Handwashing, Home food safety, Poultry, Story of Your Dinner, storyofyourdinner, West Virginia

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