Sanitation and Personal Hygiene
Reducing the risk of food poisoning.
Why is personal hygiene important?
Personal hygiene is important for many reasons. Having good hygiene helps you prevent from developing infections and from reducing the risk of them spreading. Having good hygiene avoids cross contamination in the kitchen. Personal hygiene is also important because people don't want to be around someone who isn't clean or doesn't have proper hygiene. Poor hygiene also has bad effects on health. If you don't wash your heads often, you spread germs through your body, and are spread to others. Did you know showering everyday reduces the risk of getting sick more often? Now you know.
What is the difference between personal hygiene and sanitation?
Personal hygiene has to do with your personal cleanliness. Personal hygiene is the sanitation of your body, you should act like your body is a planet and it should be clean. Sanitation is a form of hygiene. But sanitation is the cleanliness of your household, neighbor, city etc. By household we mean things like tools, equipment, plates, spoons etc. So to summarize the difference between personal hygiene and sanitation. Sanitation is the cleanliness of a community and personal hygiene is the cleanliness of yourself and your body.
How can we prevent cross contamination?
Cross contamination is the transfer of bacteria or toxins from one food to another. One way we can prevent cross contamination by having good hygiene. We need to keep washing our hands frequently to avoid the spread of bacteria. Another way to avoid cross contamination is to always keep our hair up in our hair net. Wear clean clothes and you apron in the kitchen to avoid cross contamination. Always cover your cuts with a band-aid and wear a glove if needed. These are some of the many ways we can avoid cross contamination.
How does bacteria grow and how can we stop it?
Most of the bacteria in our kitchen and food is there but isn’t visible to us. They don’t change anything in our kitchen like the color or texture of something (plate, spoon etc.) There are 3 main ways bacteria can enter our food or our body
· Before
· During
· After Prep and cooking.
To prevent bacteria from growing clean your towels, sponges, counter tops and tools ( forks, spoons etc) clean. Also clean your kitchen counters clean so you don’t have an cross contaminating. Bacteria grows when you don’t clean or sanitize your appliances or things appropriately.
Danger Zones/ Important Temperatures
The Danger Zone is the temperature range where the bacteria multiplies very fast. The range is 4°C-60°C or 40°F-140°F. Each food has a different temperature it needs to be stored at. For example, cooked fish needs to be stored at 140° F or above. Pork needs to stored at 145° F. Ground beef needs to be stored at 165° F. These are the important temperatures for many food items.
Different ways food can be contaminated?
There are 3 main ways food can be contaminated.
1.Chemical ( soaps, sanitizers)
2.Biological ( molds, bacteria, viruses)
3.Physical (hygiene, nail, hair, bugs)