Shopping..

5.  When buying frozen meats and seafood, dig below the frost line of the freezer.  Sometimes, the packages sitting on the top might have defrosted a bit and then refrozen due to customers constantly opening and closing freezer doors.  Also, do not buy anything where the packaging has been damaged or opened.

6.  If you plan to buy fresh meat or seafood from the butcher’s display case, ensure that they buy from reputable sources. You don’t want to find out that they bought their shrimp from Bubba on the side of the road.

7.  When purchasing items from a salad bar area, make sure that the items are properly refrigerated and displayed properly.  In addition, you don’t want’ cross contamination, so make sure that the sushi is not mingling with the salad greens and so forth.

8.  Pick up your ice cream and other milk products as the last part of your grocery shopping trip.  Make sure you keep them segregated from your meats and prepackaged goods. Picking up your cold and frozen items last will ensure that they do no get warm and spoil.

9.  By the same token, if you are planning to buy any hot foods from the deli section of the supermarket, be sure to save that for last too.  This will give the food less time to cool off by the time you get it home.

10.  After your shopping trip, head straight home to put your food items away.  If you plan to make a stop or two afterwards or you live more than thirty minutes away, plan to bring a cooler with you with ice packs to keep your cold and frozen foods from spoiling. 

Protecting yourself and your family from food poisoning is fairly easy when you follow the above listed tips.  Of course, that is only half the battle.  You must also employ some basic safety rules similar to those listed above when preparing your meals as well. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 4:02 am and is filed under Shopping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.