It can be difficult for someone to live with something from a minor stomach ache to extreme gastroenteritis, and even anything much more sinister. Food poisoning isn't just a problem when you're on your tropical vacation or dining out.
Many people get sick as a result of the food they consume even at home. The wrong way to store, prepare, or cook food will lead to the growth or spread of germs that can cause illnesses.
There are mostly two types of food contamination - Chemical and Biological. Fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, and additives leached from packaging are examples of chemical contamination. Microorganisms such as microbes, fungi, and moulds are examples of biological contaminants.
What is Food Safety?
Food safety refers to procedures for preparing, handling, and storing food that are designed to avoid foodborne disease and illness During their journey from farm to factory to fork, food products can come into contact with a variety of health hazards. To reduce these risks and protect customers, safe food handling methods and procedures are applied at any point of the food processing life cycle.
Food hygiene principles help to keep food from being contaminated and resulting in food poisoning. With this in mind, the most important aspect of the food processing process is ensuring that the food is suitable for human consumption. This includes everything from the farm to the fork, or from the fields to your dish.
This means that food hygiene is important both at home and in restaurants, grocery stores, and food processing plants. The general public is becoming more mindful of food safety, and news organizations are focusing on food recalls and illnesses more often. Food Safety and Food Quality are the most important aspects of any food-handling environment.
Importance of food safety
Foodborne diseases affect millions of Indians each year, and thousands die. This is a totally avoidable problem that harms both people and the economy, but all of these diseases can be prevented. Here are several reasons why food safety is important:
You cannot eat or drink if the food or drink is unsafe to consume. The most basic example is clean drinking water. We'd never drink water that didn't come from a trustworthy source. The same principle applies in the case of food.
Every day, people all over the world become ill as a result of the food or alcohol they eat. Food poisoning can be caused by bacteria, viruses, and parasites present in food.
Since you can't see, taste, or smell something out of the ordinary, It is difficult to find or there's no way to prove whether food is contaminated or not.
Food poisoning can cause stomachaches and nausea, as well as more severe health issues including kidney failure and death.
Small children/babies, pregnant mothers, the elderly, and immunocompromised people, including those with HIV infections and cancer patients, are all at high risk.
Health safety and sanitation prevent germs from spreading and achieving harmful levels in foods.
Ensures a balanced family lifestyle on a regular basis.
Maintaining one's fitness and avoiding the extra costs of treatment and medical examinations. This is true in the corporate world. Companies lose billions of dollars per year due to employee downtime around the world.
Washing hands with common soaps is responsible for 33% of all food poisoning incidents. As a result, it is important to exercise proper personal hygiene. And though we are told this from a young age, handwashing remains a major issue in the kitchen.
Cross-contamination is a common source of food poisoning and bacteria may be transferred from one food to another (usually from raw food or meat to ready to eat foods).
It is important to understand how it progresses so that you can deter it. For food factories to make and sell food that is safe to consume, good food hygiene is needed. The first step is for managers and employees to understand and know what food hygiene and food safety are.
Food Safety keeps consumers safe.
Food Quality And its Importance
Food quality means sum of all properties and attributes of a food item that are acceptable to the customer. These food quality attributes include appearance, together with size, shape, gloss, colour, and consistency, texture, flavor, and nutritional content.
High-quality foods recommended in the healthy eating plate include vegetables and fruits, whole grains, healthy fats and healthy sources of protein which are minimally processed and unrefined.
Few effective ways to improve food flavor are
Eradicate artificial ingredients
Practice the use of house-made dressings and sauces of fresh ingredients
Always use fresh herbs and spices
Minimal the use of processed foods
The period of time food is stored before you eat it and the conditions in which the food is stored affect its quality. The longer the storage the lower its nutritional value. Food Quality keeps consumers happy.
Why is good food hygiene most important in the care home?
If you're installing or renovating cooking and storage areas in nursing home residents, the first thing on your to-do list should be to consider food safety. We look at the main areas to consider when designing your kitchen layout, selecting commercial catering equipment, and finalizing the food safety management processes is very important.
In residential care homes, meals are served and cooked on-site for elderly and disabled people who are more susceptible to infection, food safety and maintaining the highest degree of general hygiene are important.
According to the Food Standards Authority: “Food poisoning may cause gastroenteritis and dehydration, as well as potentially more severe health issues including kidney failure.” Food poisoning and related infections may be more common in older adults, and E.coli outbreaks may be more common due to their weakened immune systems.
Summary
Food that is healthy and delicious has not lost its nutritional importance, is safe in terms of physical, chemical, and microbial hygiene, and is not rotten. The pillar of good living is food safety and hygiene. With good food hygiene, the majority of foodborne illnesses can be avoided.
