Food Safety Feature Articles
Keeping Back-to-School Lunches Safe
Janet M. Hackert, Regional Nutrition and Health Education Specialist, University of Missouri Extension
School is back in session and for many that means back-to-school lunches. Whether you pack a lunch for your scholar or for yourself, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans gives some basic food safety tips for all of us.
The USDA recommends that we clean hands, food contact
surfaces, and fruits and vegetables; and chill
(refrigerate) perishable food promptly and keep it cold.
Washing hands with soap and warm water is nothing new.
Washing fruits and vegetables, though, may not be the
norm for everyone. Stop and think for a moment how many
people have handled an apple or green pepper before you
get it home from a store. Someone picked and packed it.
Someone unloaded and stacked it in the store. Perhaps
another shopper picked it up, and returned it. Then you
put it in your cart and the same person who
gave you your change will likely be the one to put it in a sack. That’s a lot of
opportunity for contamination. It just makes sense to
wash it before eating it.
But what about if you don’t eat the peel or skin?
If there are germs on the outside of say, a banana, as
you peel it and touch the inside, you will be spreading
those germs inside. Likewise, when slicing those juicy
watermelons or cantaloupes, the knife drags any germs
from the outside into the part we eat. So it’s
advisable to wash all fruit, whether it is peeled or
not.
As for keeping foods cold, there are a lot of ways to
keep foods in a lunch cold until lunch time. The
obvious would be to put the food in a refrigerator at
school (or at work). An insulated lunch box with a
freezer box in it works too, especially if it’s kept in
a cool place and not in a sunny window. Frozen foods can
also keep other cold foods cold in an insulated lunch
bag or box. For example, a container of frozen peaches
or a frozen water bottle can be used instead of a
freezer box. A meat or cheese sandwich can be made the
night before, frozen and used as a cold source in the
lunch box.
For more information on these or other food safety tips,
go to
http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines and click on
Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Then click on the
Food Safety chapter.
Last update:
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
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