A study conducted in the United Kingdom reveals that approximately 2.4 million people suffer from food poisoning every year. This is mostly due to viral or bacterial contamination. Although most people can recover within a few days without treatment, not everyone is so lucky.
In this context, Primrose Freestone, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Microbiology at the University of Leicester, explained what you should definitely not eat and where you should definitely not eat to reduce the risk of foodborne infection. Now, let’s take a look at Freestone’s recommendations together…
Do not eat outdoors
Keeping your hands clean when handling food is key to avoiding getting sick, but hot running water and soap are hard to find in a park or at the beach. That’s why you can use alcohol hand gels, but they don’t kill all germs.
Additionally, food tends to attract a number of flying and crawling creatures such as flies, wasps and ants, all of which can transfer germs including E coli, Salmonella and Listeria to your food.
It’s crucial to keep perishable foods cold and covered, as germs can double in size if food is allowed to heat up to 30°C for more than a few hours. Meat on barbecues needs to be cooked thoroughly and a meat thermometer is a good way to prevent food poisoning. You should never eat meat with an internal temperature below 70°C.
Beware of buffets
The microbiologist says that he is very careful about the microbiological safety of hot and cold buffets, as he knows under what conditions food-related bacteria prefer to grow.
Indoors, food can be subject to contamination from insects, dust and, most of all, humans. Therefore, the risk of food poisoning when eating at a buffet is quite high.
Contamination occurs when buffet visitors touch food, and germs can be sprayed into buffets by people sneezing or coughing near food. Even indoors, contamination should be considered when insects such as flies or wasps land on food left out in the open. In addition, germs can be transmitted from the air, which is rich in bacteria, fungi and viruses.
Don’t eat oysters
The microbiologist says some foods he never eats include raw shellfish like oysters. This is because oysters are filter feeders and can concentrate microbes such as Vibrio and norovirus in their tissues.
An oyster contaminated with Vibrio won’t look, smell or taste any different, but it can still make you very sick. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that approximately 80,000 people contract Vibrio infection from raw oysters, and 100 people die from vibriosis each year in the United States alone.
bagged salads
It has been determined that bagged lettuce may contain microbes that cause food poisoning, such as E coli, Salmonella and Listeria.
One research group found that these pathogens grew more than a thousandfold when juiced from salad leaves, even if the salad bag was stored in the refrigerator. Worryingly, these same microbes are becoming more virulent and thus more successful at causing infection by using salad juices.
Even if the expiration date has not passed…
It is necessary to check expiration dates regularly for perishable foods, but if it is before the expiry date and the food package looks swollen or the food looks or smells different than expected when opened, there is a possibility that it may be contaminated.
chopping boards
You should never use the same chopping boards for raw and cooked foods, and you should wash your hands before and after touching food. One thing you should never do is reheat cooked rice. This is because uncooked rice can contain Bacillus cereus spores that cause food poisoning. Although Bacillus cells are killed by cooking, the spores survive. If the rice is allowed to cool and sit at room temperature, the spores turn into bacteria and their numbers increase rapidly as rice is a good Bacillus culture medium at room temperature.
Bacillus cultured in rice can produce toxins that can cause vomiting within a few hours after ingestion and diarrhea lasting up to 24 hours.
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