Food Recalls: Food Safety at Home, School and Restaurants

You've been following food safety advice for years now, carefully washing your raw chicken before cooking, disinfecting your cutting board after cutting meat, avoiding cross contamination of foods, and cooking your poultry, pork, and beef to "safe" temperatures, right? Even after following all of the precautions, your family may still be at risk for food borne illnesses.

Salmonella and E. coli outbreaks affect foods other than raw chicken and beef as consumers have discovered in recent years: spinach, tomatoes, and even peanut butter are among the more notable food recalls in recent years. Salmonella and E. coli are just two of the dozens of bacterium infecting our food supply.

Is the Food Served at School Safe? Food recalls affect food served at school lunchrooms, too!

When you send your kids off to school, you assume that they're going to be safe and that the school officials are looking after them. This is true; however, food recalls affect school districts, too. You may have cleaned out your cupboard, but did your child's school do the same?

A recent Associated Press article reported that over 175 school districts in southern California received salmonella-tainted peanut products. Not a big surprise, really. However, earlier these school districts had been told that they had been unaffected by the Peanut Corp. of America recall. While parents have been clearing out their pantries and tossing products containing peanut butter paste, one wonders if the schools have been doing the same.

The first place to check is with your local school district. Now that the news has come out that the peanut butter recall affects schools, it's likely that your school district is making sure to pull the products. Many may have already done so as a precaution. Check the district's Web site or call the school's health clerk. If you're not satisfied, send you kids to school with a packed lunch from home.

This massive recall affects peanut products manufactured as far back as January 2007 which means that it's possible that your kids have been eating tainted peanut butter products for two years! This also means that both you and the schools need to reevaluate any "shelf stable" products that you've been storing since early 2007.

Restaurant Food Safety: Where you eat makes a difference

Before crossing the threshold into your favorite restaurant, take a look at the restaurant's health department rating. An "A" rating generally means that the restaurant complies with health department standards for cleanliness and hygiene while lower grades indicate problems.

Why should you avoid restaurants with low scores? Foodborne Illness Studies conclude that the use of hygiene rating cards in restaurants is associated with a reduction of hospitalizations for food borne illnesses.

Did Your Food Make You Sick? Symptoms of Food borne Illness

While nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea are well-known food poisoning symptoms, did you know that fever, wheezing, tingling, itching, numbness, paralysis, disorientation, seizures, and other maladies are also symptoms of food borne illnesses? Whenever unusual symptoms occur, consider the possibility of food poisoning before assuming that you have a cold or flu.

Many symptoms of food poisoning are similar to symptoms of other bugs. For example, you may think you have a cold, but it could be food poisoning. See the FDA'S Bad Bug Book for detailed symptoms of various types of food poisoning symptoms along with the bugs and toxins that cause them.

Food Safety Tips: Prevent Food borne Illnesses by following these Food Safety Tips

• Thoroughly wash all produce - even prewashed salads and foods with rinds and peels (like cantaloupe, oranges, and bananas).
• Pay attention to the news and throw out any foods that have been recalled or are suspected of being contaminated. This food safety lens contains an RSS feed of current FDA food safety headlines, making it an excellent stop for all of your food safety concerns. Bookmark this page and visit often.
• When in doubt, throw it out! Regularly check your refrigerator for spoiled food and toss anything suspect or old. In addition, toss any item that could be contaminated or is the subject of an FDA investigation, even if it was expensive.
• Label your leftovers with the date.
• Go to the American Dietetic Association Website for detailed food safety tips covering: lunchboxes, holidays, tailgating, dining out, perishable foods, leftovers, meats and seafood safety, and other food safety concerns.
• Invest in a meat thermometer and cook your meat to the appropriate "food safe" temperature.
• Set your refrigerator to 40 degrees or below.

Stash foods in the refrigerator within two hours of cooking.