Fresh Food, Sanitation, and Hygiene
Fresh Food, Sanitation, and Hygiene is the Perfect Combination of a Healthy Living. Sanitation is a way of life. It is the quality of living that is expressed. In the clean home, the clean farm, the clean business environment, industry, clean neighborhood, and clean community.
Being a way of life, it is directly proportional to your well-being and the state of your health. It must be a habit that has to be ingrained into people’s daily lives. It is nourished by discipline, principle, knowledge, and determination to remain clean, and should be a way of life.
Every day, you are exposed to harmful pathogens and bacteria in and around your homes, workplaces farms, etc.
Also READ: Food that will keep you away from your Doctor
You need to be protected against the sale of adulterated food, inferior quality food. Poorly packaged and processed food that is exposed to airborne bacteria-related diseases.
Mode of Food Contamination
Food is frequently subjected and exposed to chemical and biological contamination. Especially in the process of product packaging and consumption. Thus has a direct extensive and important bearing on public health.
There is a clear correlation and evidence now that a vast amount of human disease. And suffering is directly due to the consumption of infected and contaminated food. Food that are poorly processed under poor hygienic condition, poor storage facilities.
Most foodborne infections are usually gastrointestinal disturbances caused by living organisms. While intoxications are diseases caused by chemical poisons in foods.
It is a known fact that some dubious and unscrupulous farmers and businessmen. That engages in the sale of some food crops such as cowpea or beans to apply certain dangerous chemicals for its preservation and storage.
If proper care is not taking in the cooking of such food it will result in serious food poisoning. Therefore a knowledge of a variety of toxicants found in food due to lack of proper food sanitation and hygiene is important.
You might also like to READ: Poisoning how to protect yourself and your children from it.
Dubious method of food storage and preservation, faulty method of cultivation indiscriminate use of pesticide and herbicides in crop production. Harvesting, transportation, processing, distribution, and cooking.
It is therefore very important for every consumer to be knowledgeable and inquisitive as to where his food is being produced. Under which hygienic condition, whether it is a government-approved. And regulated food processing company.
How to Buy Fresh Foods
When it comes to buying foods vegetables, fish, meat and fruits when and where we purchase them. And how we preserved them, will go a long way to affect the freshness, quality and the overall hygienic condition of the food items.
Buying fresh vegetables from the farmer or the farmers market during the early hours of the day. When they are being harvested will guarantee its freshness.
The importance of intelligent selection. And kin observation during the purchase of fruits and vegetables for use at home must not be taken lightly.
The following characteristics of fruits and vegetables will help in pinpointing good quality food, vegetables, fruits, eggs, and meats.
- Fruits such as apple, pears, peach’s plums, and tomatoes should have full color. Good shape, Reasonable degree of firmness.
- There should be an absence of any surface defects such as scars and bruises. Little holes depicting insects burrowing into it.
- Berries and grapes should have full color. They should be dry they should be free from sand and leaves and any foreign materials.
- Citrus and arranges should have rough and loose skins. It should look fresh and firm, without any brownish spot depicting rottenness. If possible avoid buying already pilled fruits. The color and texture of a particular fruit will help in knowing whether it’s fresh or not.
- Vegetables such as salad plants which include spinach should have a good color. Fresh crisp and tender. They should be free from wilted or yellow leaves.
- Ensure that carrot and other root vegetables should be firm, not soft, clean and fresh looking.
- Pears and vegetables should be green in color, clear and bright in appearance.
Eggs and Meat
- Eggs, meat are mostly brown, followed by white shelled eggs, depending on the breed of the layer hen.
- The shell of a fresh egg always has a delicate velvety appearance called “bloom” which is due to the protective shiny mucous coating with which the shell is supplied when the egg is laid.
- Normally when a fresh egg is broken, the egg yolk is usually golden or light yellow depending on the type of feed used in feeding the layers.
- The egg yolk of a fresh egg is usually well-formed and rounded in shape distinct from the egg white when an egg is broken into a flat plate.
- Depending on the region and part of the world you are from, fish are often preserved in smoked form a good smoke fish smells fine and shiny. Dried, and firm to the touch.
- If you must eat fresh fish, let it be fresh and alive. A lot of fresh fish are sold in a bath or large basin, which allows you to choose the best for yourself.
- It is always best practices that when purchasing meat for consumption that you go to government-regulated abattoir to buy your fresh meat, or a good meat vendor with daily fresh supplies and slaughter.