Research: Are you fond of eating out? Learn from a microbiologist what and where to never eat

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Research: Leicester, England Every year, around 2.4 million people in the UK get food poisoning – most often from viral or bacterial contamination. Most people recover within a few days without treatment, but not everyone is so lucky. a microbiologist Primrose Freestone who is Senior Lecturer in Clinical Microbiology at the University of Leicester He said he’s probably more acutely aware of the risk of food-borne infections than other people. Here are some of the things he pays attention to.

• While eating out: He said that he rarely eats food in the open – be it a picnic or a barbeque – because the risk of food poisoning increases when eating out.

• Keeping your hands clean when eating food is key to not getting sick, but how often do you get warm running water and soap at the park or beach? You can use alcohol hand gels (they’re better than nothing), but they don’t kill all the germs.

• Additionally, food attracts flying and crawling creatures like flies, wasps and ants, which can transfer germs including E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria to your food.

• It is important to keep perishable food cool and covered as the number of germs can double if food is left hot at 30 degrees Celsius for more than a few hours.

• For barbecue, the meat must be thoroughly cooked, and a meat thermometer is a good investment to avoid food poisoning. Do not eat meat if the internal temperature of meat is less than 70 degrees Celsius.

• Food Room: Knowing what food-related conditions bacteria like to grow in, I am very conscious of the microbiological safety of hot and cold buffet displays.

• Indoors, food can come in contact with insects, dust and, above all, people’s infections. Therefore, food poisoning is an inevitable risk when eating at a buffet.

• Contamination occurs from buffet visitors touching food, and people sneezing or coughing near food can spread germs throughout the buffet.

• Even indoors, one must consider contamination by insects such as flies or wasps that settle on open food. Additionally, germs can also accumulate from air rich in bacteria, fungi and viruses.

He said he always watches the clock when he’s at a buffet because there’s a two-hour rule: if perishable food is not covered and refrigerated, it will become unsafe to eat within two hours. The problem is that buffets are laid out before you arrive, so it’s hard to tell when you’ll arrive when the cooked meats, seafood, salads, desserts and deliciously arranged fruits and vegetables will be there more than two hours before you eat. Must have been kept on time.

For hot buffets, such as those served for breakfast in hotels, I always avoid lukewarm food, as bacteria causing food poisoning can grow rapidly if food is kept at temperatures below 60 degrees Celsius. .

Hot food should be served hot, i.e. at a temperature of at least 60 degrees Celsius.

‘If there is any uncertainty about the safety of the food offered, I reluctantly snack on fresh toasted bread and packaged marmalade’

• Shellfish: There are some foods I never eat, and raw shellfish, like oysters, is one of them. This is because oysters are filter feeders and can concentrate germs like vibrio and norovirus in their tissue.

• Vibrio-contaminated oysters don’t look, smell, or taste any different, but they can still make you very sick.

• The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 80,000 people get Vibrio infections from raw oysters, and 100 people die from vibriosis each year in the US alone.

• It is also possible to get food poisoning from eating any raw shellfish (clams, mussels, whelks, cockles). Only well-cooked shellfish should be eaten as heat effectively kills harmful germs.

• Canned Salad: I never eat canned salad, mainly because one of my areas of research is fresh salad safety. It has been found that canned lettuce may contain food poisoning germs such as E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria.

He said that his research group has found that these pathogens grow more than a thousand times better when mixed with the juice of lettuce leaves, even if the lettuce container is kept in the refrigerator.

For salad lovers concerned with this information, most canned salads are safe if stored in the refrigerator, washed thoroughly before use (even ready-to-eat salads should be washed) and stored before purchasing. Should be eaten as soon as possible after.

Cooking Practices:

‘In terms of cooking practices, I have a list of do’s and don’ts’

For perishable foods, I regularly check use-by dates, but if it is past the expiration date and the food package looks bloated, or the food looks or smells different than expected upon opening, , then I throw it in the trash because it may be contaminated.

I never use the same chopping board for raw and cooked food, and it is important to wash hands before and after serving and eating food.

One of my “never do” practices is reheating cooked rice. This is because raw rice may contain spores of Bacillus cereus, which is a food poisoning germ.

Although cooking kills the bacillus cells, the spores survive. If the rice is left to cool and kept at room temperature, the spores will develop into bacteria, the numbers of which will increase rapidly as the room temperature rises. But rice is a good medium for Bacillus culture.

Rice-cultured bacillus can produce toxins, which can cause vomiting and diarrhea for up to 24 hours within a few hours of eating.

while eating out

While eating out he told – ‘I think having a high level of food safety awareness makes me stay first in line for the buffet, be cautious about eating from the breakfast bar, and keep an eye on the clock to see how often perishable food is replaced. Is’

I also never feed leftovers to my house pets (they are usually past the two-hour time limit)’

The advantage of being a microbiologist is that we know how to avoid food poisoning and in turn, people have confidence that our food is very safe to eat’

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