Keep Foods Safe

The Dietary Guidelines emphasize the need to keep food safe. That's something many of us often neglect or don't think twice about.

There are countless situations in which we don't think about food safety, but keeping foods safe for consumption is key. The following tips based on the Dietary Guidelines can help you keep foods safe and avoid microbial foodborne illness:

• Clean hands, food-contact surfaces, and raw foods like fruits and vegetables.
• Do not wash or rinse meat or poultry.
• Separate raw, cooked, and ready-to-eat foods while shopping for, preparing or storing foods.
• Cook foods to a safe temperature to kill micoorganisms.
• Refrigerate perishable foods promptly and defrost foods properly.
• Avoid raw (unpasteurized) milk.
• Avoid raw or partially cooked eggs or foods containing raw eggs, raw or undercooked meat and poultry, unpasteurized juices and raw sprouts.
• When in doubt about a food, throw it out.

Source: So What Can I Eat?! How to Make Sense of the New Dietary Guidelines for Americans and Make Them Your Own (Wiley 2006), Elisa Zied, MS, RD, with Ruth Winter, MS.