Camping Tips: Safety with Food

One of the most important safety tips when going camping is to make sure to follow many food safety tips. Eating food that is not safe to eat can result in serious medical conditions, especially considering the sick person would be off in the middle of the woods and not close to a hospital. To make sure your food is safe to eat you must pack the food properly, bring the right types of food and keep everything, including the water, clean.

The first step to keeping food safe to eat on a camping trip is packing the food correctly. Any refrigerated items obviously need to be packed in a cooler. If the refrigerated items include some foods that are already prepared and some foods that are raw and will be cooked later then be sure to keep the prepared foods and the raw foods separate from each other when they are packed.

Refrigerated foods should only be eaten on the first day of the camping trip. After the first day campers should only eat dry foods. Never eat any left over food unless there is still ice in the cooler. Some safe dry foods to consider on a camping trip includes peanut butter in plastic jars, concentrated juice boxes, canned foods, dried noodles, beef jerky, dehydrated foods, dried nuts or fruits, powdered fruit drinks or milk, powdered mixes for pancakes or biscuits and dried pasta.

It is also very important to be very clean on a campsite. Always clean everything. Clean your hands before handling food. Clean your hands after handling food. This is especially the case with any raw food. The best way to clean your hands when going camping is to bring disposable wipes or liquid hand sanitizer.

It is also very important when camping to always have clean water. Never drink water that is from a river or a lake. Bring enough bottled water or tap water from home to last the whole trip. Any time campers do run out of water then the only time it is okay to use water from the river or lake is after it has been boiled in order to clean the water.

Sources:
Food Safety While Boating, Camping and Hiking, Minnesota Department of Health