Food Hygiene Essentials

A new Hampshire camp was close while it was being checked for the cause of salmonella food poisoning. Children fell sick after eating a pudding that was contaminated with pathogenic salmonella bacteria. After all the negative publicity about salmonella in the media over the past couple of weeks, another salmonella outbreak was the last thing this well renowned camp needed.

Puddings and other deserts are quite common vectors of salmonella poisoning for several reasons. I would like to go over some of these reasons in this article to give you insight into the world of puddings and deserts.

Last courses are very often very minimally cooked. Sometimes they incorporate meringue which is basically just egg white beaten with sugar. Often last courses are not cooked to temperatures that exceed the boiling point of milk which is around 80 degrees Celsius. Some strains of resistant and virulent bacteria are very capable of withstanding such temperatures.

Camps are places which function only at certain times of the year and infrastructure of camp kitchens is not very sophisticated. Fridges may not function at required temperatures and food stores may be open to many different persons from within the camp. In addition, the staff which are hired by camps to do kitchen work might not be state of the art professionals, particularly in matters of food hygiene. If that were not enough and to cut staffing costs still further camp cooks are requested by management to work with casual workers who may have little if not no prior knowledge about the workings of a large kitchen.

Chefs are known to like to mix many ingredients by hand, particularly when using corn starch. Corn starch likes to coagulate when it comes into contact with liquid and many chefs like to feel that the consistency of a mixture is smooth. If the chef or one of his workers has not washed his hands properly after going to the toilet or after handling meat or fish (particularly chicken or turkey), bacteria will infest the desert mixture.

Another possibility for salmonella contamination is if the chef or one of his helpers failed to notice that eggs, milk of both used in the mixture for a pudding were not fit to be used. Often casual staff do not know the signs of contaminated milk or eggs.

Yet another possibility is that the chef made a pudding mixture early in the morning before he started to prepare meats and other foods that may contaminate a pudding mixture but failed to insure that it was refrigerated. On discovering the mistake he may have decided to take the chance that the mixture was not contaminated. These things do happen in many, many kitchens.

Another scenario could have been that staff cut corners and failed to wash cooking trays properly after a previous usage. These dirty dishes may have been exposed to cockroaches rats,cats or racoons and thus contained with salmonella. The final possibility that I would like to mention is that one or more of the ingredients other than eggs and milk that went into the pudding may have been infected with salmonella. After all, salmonella has been turning up all over the place recently. Why not on ingredients such as dried fruit? In the worst scenario several of these factors may have occurred simultaneously. If this was the case, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

Extra care must be taken when preparing food for the young, the elderly, pregnant women and the infirmed. These people are the most vulnerable and as fate would have it these groups are exposed to the highest percentage of cases of food contamination. As you can see from the breakdown I have given you, more than one factor may be to blame. Trouble starts when the approach is as fault. The only way to minimise food poisoning risk is meticulous attention to detail and correct practice at all levels of an operation like a camp.

I’m a qualified chef, life coach and psychotherapist. In the following article I would like to share with you a whole new approach to loosing weight safely. This is a system that I have formulated after years of working with clients who have problems maintaining a diet regimen.

This system does not require you to count calories, drink weird powder blends or feel hungry. Instead, what I advise my clients to do requires a change in their whole approach to food and drink but at the same time still keeps eating a pleasurable experience without causing any inbalences in the diet.

There are actually more than ten points in the system. What I require you to do is to choose at least ten points that you know that you can adopt into your daily routine. However the first point in the list is the only obligatory point in the system and it acts as the basis for all the others.

Read the list carefully and take time to understand the implications of all the different points. You can change points if you like. Your first choice may not be the ideal choice for you. Have fun with the system and look at it as a form of rehabilitation rather than a way of punishing yourself for how you look and feel.

Here is the list of points.

1) (obligatory). Drink one cup of water first thing in the morning and thereafter one cup of water before each meal, one cup of water during the meal and one cup of water after the meal. In addition drink one cup of water two hours before going to bed.

2) Always eat at a set table. Never eat standing up or laying down. Never eat in front of the TV, the movie screen or the theatre.

3) Cook your own food. Do not buy pre cooked dinners because they contain substances that are put there to make you feel hungrier.

4) Eat three pieces of fruit from the following list every day: apples, pears, oranges, grapefruits.

5) Eat four or five pieces of raw vegetables from the following list: carrots, radishes, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, onion, bell peppers.

6) Eat at least three portions of cooked vegetables per day.

7) Eat three portions of grilled chicken or turkey breast per week.

Eat three portions of fish per week. (Instead of meat)

9) Eat in restaurants only once per week.

10) Eat Bread only with one meal of the day and eat no more than three slices. Eat whole grain bread. Whit bread is addictive because it gives the body no nutrients other than empty calories therefore causing the body to ask to be fed again. Whole grain bread constituted eighty percent of a healthy diet before the technology of making white flour was invented.

11) Do not eat anything that has a filling, especially cheese fillings. These are usually processed cheese and not good for you.

12) Do Not eat anything that is salted. (This relates to salted snacks)

13) Eat no more than one portion of desert per day, prefer fruit to desert.

14) Eat ice cream only once per week.

15) Do not eat fried food unless it has been fried with hot air. Poached eggs are healthier.

16) Prefer to eat food without heavy sauces.

17) Proportion you carbohydrate intake so that it makes up no more than one third of your total food intake.

18) Do Not drink any sweet sodas, no cola.

19) limit yourself to one alcoholic drink per day.

20) Cut out chocolate and sweets.

If there are any of the above points that are already incorporated in to your lifestyle then don’t choose these points to be among the ten, pick another choice instead.

See if you can adhere to ten points for ten weeks. If you manage this you are then ready for the advanced stage which includes adding the other ten points, For life.

Good Luck.

How many of you have been to somebody’s house for tea and been given a moldy piece of sponge cake or Danish pastry?

I must say that it has happened to me, not often, but it has happened. What do you do? Do you remove the mold and leave it on the side of the plate? Feed it to the dog, provided there is one? Cunningly stuff it behind the seat cushions? You’re in a jam and you know it. Those eyes are on you and they want to see your reaction to the cake that you know that you are going to have to force down, mold and all.

You just hope that the mold will not make you sick. You go back home without saying a word and take a couple of stiff shots of whiskey in the hope that the alcohol will kill the microorganisms that you were forced to ingest. Or, if you are particularly bold you might decide to say ” I think I’ll leave that, I think I saw a bit of mold on it”. In which case you will be brought another piece of moldy cake only this time the mold has been scraped off. Either way, you loose.

It always seems that the mold has done you no harm and after ringing the clinic for re assurance you decide to let the whole matter drop. I think most of us have been in that boat, right?

Molds are microscopic organisms which are connected to the fungus family. It has been common belief that molds are part of the plant kingdom but recent research is now questioning that assumption. More and more scientists are now considering molds to be a part of the animal kingdom. Moulds can produce mycotoxins in food.

It is possible, from a food aspect, to divide molds into three main groups. In the first group we have edible molds, in the second group we have moulds which are used for medicinal purposes and in the third group we have poisonous molds. If we were to put each of these categories into three different circles in the form of a triangle and then squash them together so that they merge into each other to an extent if one third we would get a true picture of how molds really act.

Some molds are edible within limits and if those limits are exceeded then the mold becomes toxic. Some molds are edible and yet have medicinal qualities, some are edible, medicinal which also have toxic qualities and some molds are toxic but have some medicinal qualities when used in the right way and in the right dosages.

We all know about the molds that are used in the cheese industry. Molds are used to deter the contamination of cheese by undesirable bacteria as well as for taste reasons. You can eat as much of this moldy cheese as you like and you will not be sick because of it.

I 1990 I remember that we had several cases of a very violent form of liver cancer that claimed the lives of quite a few people. This mold was found to be present in pistachio nuts that originated in Turkey. Most of the people who died from this mold were people who worked in kiosks which sold pistachios. This is one instance of a mold which can infest food which has quite lethal effects when ingested in sufficient quantity.

The rule of thumb concerning mold is that any form of mold that forms naturally on food should not be ingested. Throw the food out.Don’t even try to salvage part of the food. Molds used in cheese and other food sources such as truffles should only be eaten if you are sure the food source is safe. Medicinal molds such as antibiotics are to some extent out of your control but if you know that you have had an adverse reaction to these products in the past then do not take them. Inform your physician about your reaction and he will choose an alternate treatment.

Molds are one of the food hygiene issues which we come across in our daily lives. Some molds which we may inadvertently eat are hidden and by this I mean within various types of fruit and nuts, Apples often have mold in the center where the pips are. An apple should always be cut in half and inspected before eating. Nuts are often moldy also and should not be opened with your teeth. Always open the nut in such a way that allows you to inspect the nut before eating. Do not eat moldy, sunflower, pumpkin seeds or ground nuts. These molds are not good for you.