Many families plan get-togethers during the summer – but if you are not careful, these celebrations of summer fun and sun can end up making everyone sick.
Sandy Benson, an Infection Preventionist at Hendricks Regional Health, is here to tell us how four simple steps (clean, separate, cook, chill) can protect you and your loved ones from food poisoning.
Food Safety During the Hot Summer Months
Featured Speaker:
Sandra (Sandy) Benson, BSN, RN
Sandy Benson is the Infection Preventionist at Hendricks Regional Health. Transcription:
Food Safety During the Hot Summer Months
Melanie Cole (Host): So many families plan these get togethers during the summer and it can be so much fun with all the great food, but if you are not careful, some of those celebrations of summer fun and sun can end up making everyone sick. My guest today is Sandy Benson. She is the Infection Preventionist at Hendricks Regional Health. So, Sandy what is the first thing that you like people to know about food safety in the summer? There are so many picnics and people have potato salad and all this stuff out. What do you want us to know first and foremost?
Sandy Benson, BSN, RN (Guest): Melanie, you are so right. Food poisoning peaks in the summer months when the warmer temperatures cause food germs to flourish. So, what I’m recommending is that we follow these steps for safe enjoyable grilling season and picnic season as well. First of all, you want to separate your foods. When you are doing your shopping, you want to make sure you pick up your meat, poultry and seafoods last, right before you check out of the grocery store. And you want to make sure you separate them from other foods in your shopping cart and your shopping bags. This guards against cross contamination. You also want to make sure you chill. You want to make sure you keep meat, poultry and seafood refrigerated until ready to grill. When you transport, you want to keep it below 40 degrees Fahrenheit in an insulated cooler.
And then you want to make sure you wash your hands. Wash your hands with soap and water before and after handling raw meat, poultry and seafood. You want to make sure you wash your work surfaces as well as your utensils. Very important. And then you want to make sure that you clean your cutting boards, separate those cutting boards. Don’t use the same cutting boards and plates for raw meat and poultry and seafood that you use for cutting up your vegetables. You want to make sure that you clean off your surfaces. Make sure your food is cooked to the appropriate internal temperature. You want that temperature to get high enough to kill the germs that can make you sick. And the only way to tell if food is safely cooked is to use the food thermometer.
You also want to make sure you put the food away. Don’t leave the leftovers out. It is very tempting. Everyone is having a good time. Everybody has eaten, and everybody forgets, and we leave the food out. So, you never want to leave your perishable food out for more than two hours. You want to refrigerate promptly, and you want to make sure that you don’t keep it leftover in your refrigerator for longer than three or four days.
Melanie: So, I want to start with the grilling because you mentioned a really good point. I have been at parties where they bring out a cookie sheet with the chicken on it and then they put the chicken on the grill and then they put it back on that cookie sheet to serve and I’m always like ugh. So, the grilling, utensils, cutting boards, the plate you bring it out on, different than the plate you bring it back on. Just go over a little bit of those grilling things again.
Sandy: Absolutely. When you grill, you want to make sure that you wash your hands first and foremost. When you are handling chicken, seafood and meats, things like that, you want to use separate plates. If you are preparing them, seasoning them, marinating them do that in one container and then when you apply them to the grill, put them on the grill, you take that cookie sheet, you take it back to the kitchen or whatever you used to contain that meat, back in the kitchen and wash it with warm soap and water and clean it if you want to use the same utensil. But if you want to have one separate utensil for food prep and one separate one to put the food in, you can certainly do that as well. Very important to keep that separate. And you also want to make sure again, wiping surfaces down. Sometimes we put juices on the counter or we might have the wrappings from the meat and the foods, we leave those on the counter. You definitely want to throw those away in the trash and then you want to wipe your counter down. Wash it down very good and let it dry.
Melanie: And it’s good that you mentioned the utensils as well because they sit out next to the grill in the sun and you have just turned the raw chicken with tongs and then they are sitting there in the sun, so that’s something to watch out for. Now, dairy products. Okay people bring salads which could get wilty, but the dairy products, the potato salad and the egg salad and all of those things. They can go bad pretty quick, right?
Sandy: Very quickly. What I recommend for most folks is you want to make sure that you are able to transport those things in a cooler where your temperature is at least 40 degrees Fahrenheit. And then you want to make sure that when you put them out, you don’t leave them out for any longer than two hours. Once mealtime is over, you take them, and you make sure you put them back in either a cooler where they can be at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or if you are at home, having a cookout; you put them back in the refrigerator. And you want to make sure that – you know you have leftovers and it’s not unusual. It’s okay to keep them in the refrigerator for two or three days to eat on them, but once that third day rolls in, you may want to consider discarding them.
Melanie: What if you were to keep the potato salad like in a bucket of ice, you know the way you might keep shrimp or something on a bowl of ice or on a plate of ice? Does that help?
Sandy: That can help, but the problem with that is usually you are out of your element if you are picnicking in a park or if you are elsewhere you can’t control how fast that ice is melting. You definitely don’t want to put raw meat on ice or cheeses on ice not in a container. It’s very difficult to keep - to control the temperature of those things. But that is a method of helping things stay cool longer. You have to make sure you have your handy dandy thermometer to make sure that that temperature doesn’t fall below, and you want to immediately cook or immediately serve. You don’t want to trust your ice, because if is in 90-degree weather, that ice is going to melt pretty quickly.
Melanie: Well it sure is and I’m somebody who likes to put out smaller portions and keep refilling as opposed to putting out the bigger portion that just kind of sits out there. You mentioned cheese. Being a dairy product and all, but people seem to think that cheese is kind of indestructible. And can that grow bacteria too?
Sandy: Absolutely. Very quickly. It you think about it, cheese in order to make it, sometimes you need bacteria to make the cheese itself. But basically, I do like to remind folks that cheese, any kind of dairy product will go bad very quickly and things grow considerably and then depending on your guests, if you have got babies, pregnant moms, people that are elderly, just a little bit of some of that bacteria can really cause a lot of discomfort. So, cheese is not infallible. You want to make sure you keep it as cool as you possibly can, 40 degrees, and you don’t leave it out for longer than two hours.
Melanie: What about if you pre-grill something like you grill it partly and you are going to a party and you don’t want to have to spend 40 minutes cooking a piece of chicken, so you sort of start it and then you bring it in a metal tin or something to put on the grill. Is that safe or is partial cooking, transport and then finishing cooking not a good idea?
Sandy: The only difficulty with that would be you would have to really make sure that you maintain that temperature and sometimes in the midst of the fun and the partying; if you are not got your attention on your cooking and your food; it’s very easy to contaminate or have your food to become contaminated. So, cooking food partially and not letting all the bacteria get killed; you run a risk. You run a bit of a risk that the food will continue to cook a little bit. It will start to cool down, which will make it a nice medium for bacteria. If you don’t have that in a refrigerator somewhere, you are going to definitely courting some issues there with temperature. I usually will recommend that you go ahead and cook it in its entirety and then go ahead and reheat later. Partially cooking it and then finishing cooking it, you are risking the potential for bacteria.
Melanie: People hear Sandy, about e coli, salmonella, all of these things and even with spinach or salads, romaine recently in the media, vegetables and nobody thinks of vegetables as being something that you really have to worry about. Does leaving them in the sun and this is a myth I guess I want you to clear up. Does leaving something in the sun, can that cause e coli or salmonella or is that something that had to come on it to begin with and it’s a matter of washing or not eating it at all?
Sandy: The bottom line is, if you think about it, when you go to get your vegetables from the grocery store, if you are going and they are running water over it; you’re not sure that the vegetables have been thoroughly washed and then you are not sure what’s happened in the transport or those vegetables. So, that’s the reasoning behind you want to go ahead and wash them again thoroughly when you get home. A lot of times, people will buy a bag of vegetables and they will say oh, the bag says I don’t have to wash them, they have already been prewashed. Even if the bag says they are prewashed; I highly recommend that you go ahead and wash them again. Leaving vegetables out in the sun again, if you have got a 90-degree day, longer than two hours I don’t recommend it. Bacteria pretty much can grow in any type of food source. And if you have got water hanging out on that and most of when we eat vegetables, we usually have something else on that vegetable. We have a dip, or we might have had lettuce and we might have cut up a few things and added to that lettuce to make a salad. Well those things two can promote bacteria as well. So, when you make a salad, make it a rule, it’s safer to put the salad out, let everyone enjoy it, when everyone is finished eating, you want to make sure that you put that salad away if you have got leftover salad within the two-hour time frame. And with any vegetables that you purchase from a grocery store; you want to make sure that when you get them home that you clean them, you wash them, you dry them properly. They can grow and do grow bacteria. Because those vegetables, they take a pretty long trip to get to you to the grocery store from where they are coming from.
Melanie: Well, I think that’s the main message is that we have to look at our utensils, wash our hands, not use the same sheets that you put your raw meat or fish on for cooking as the one you going to use for serving and wash all your vegetables even if the bag says all prewashed and it’s really great information for all of food safety Sandy. So, thank you so much for being with us today. This is Health Talks with HRH, Hendricks Regional Health. For more information please visit www.hendricks.org, that’s www.hendricks.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks for tuning in.
Food Safety During the Hot Summer Months
Melanie Cole (Host): So many families plan these get togethers during the summer and it can be so much fun with all the great food, but if you are not careful, some of those celebrations of summer fun and sun can end up making everyone sick. My guest today is Sandy Benson. She is the Infection Preventionist at Hendricks Regional Health. So, Sandy what is the first thing that you like people to know about food safety in the summer? There are so many picnics and people have potato salad and all this stuff out. What do you want us to know first and foremost?
Sandy Benson, BSN, RN (Guest): Melanie, you are so right. Food poisoning peaks in the summer months when the warmer temperatures cause food germs to flourish. So, what I’m recommending is that we follow these steps for safe enjoyable grilling season and picnic season as well. First of all, you want to separate your foods. When you are doing your shopping, you want to make sure you pick up your meat, poultry and seafoods last, right before you check out of the grocery store. And you want to make sure you separate them from other foods in your shopping cart and your shopping bags. This guards against cross contamination. You also want to make sure you chill. You want to make sure you keep meat, poultry and seafood refrigerated until ready to grill. When you transport, you want to keep it below 40 degrees Fahrenheit in an insulated cooler.
And then you want to make sure you wash your hands. Wash your hands with soap and water before and after handling raw meat, poultry and seafood. You want to make sure you wash your work surfaces as well as your utensils. Very important. And then you want to make sure that you clean your cutting boards, separate those cutting boards. Don’t use the same cutting boards and plates for raw meat and poultry and seafood that you use for cutting up your vegetables. You want to make sure that you clean off your surfaces. Make sure your food is cooked to the appropriate internal temperature. You want that temperature to get high enough to kill the germs that can make you sick. And the only way to tell if food is safely cooked is to use the food thermometer.
You also want to make sure you put the food away. Don’t leave the leftovers out. It is very tempting. Everyone is having a good time. Everybody has eaten, and everybody forgets, and we leave the food out. So, you never want to leave your perishable food out for more than two hours. You want to refrigerate promptly, and you want to make sure that you don’t keep it leftover in your refrigerator for longer than three or four days.
Melanie: So, I want to start with the grilling because you mentioned a really good point. I have been at parties where they bring out a cookie sheet with the chicken on it and then they put the chicken on the grill and then they put it back on that cookie sheet to serve and I’m always like ugh. So, the grilling, utensils, cutting boards, the plate you bring it out on, different than the plate you bring it back on. Just go over a little bit of those grilling things again.
Sandy: Absolutely. When you grill, you want to make sure that you wash your hands first and foremost. When you are handling chicken, seafood and meats, things like that, you want to use separate plates. If you are preparing them, seasoning them, marinating them do that in one container and then when you apply them to the grill, put them on the grill, you take that cookie sheet, you take it back to the kitchen or whatever you used to contain that meat, back in the kitchen and wash it with warm soap and water and clean it if you want to use the same utensil. But if you want to have one separate utensil for food prep and one separate one to put the food in, you can certainly do that as well. Very important to keep that separate. And you also want to make sure again, wiping surfaces down. Sometimes we put juices on the counter or we might have the wrappings from the meat and the foods, we leave those on the counter. You definitely want to throw those away in the trash and then you want to wipe your counter down. Wash it down very good and let it dry.
Melanie: And it’s good that you mentioned the utensils as well because they sit out next to the grill in the sun and you have just turned the raw chicken with tongs and then they are sitting there in the sun, so that’s something to watch out for. Now, dairy products. Okay people bring salads which could get wilty, but the dairy products, the potato salad and the egg salad and all of those things. They can go bad pretty quick, right?
Sandy: Very quickly. What I recommend for most folks is you want to make sure that you are able to transport those things in a cooler where your temperature is at least 40 degrees Fahrenheit. And then you want to make sure that when you put them out, you don’t leave them out for any longer than two hours. Once mealtime is over, you take them, and you make sure you put them back in either a cooler where they can be at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or if you are at home, having a cookout; you put them back in the refrigerator. And you want to make sure that – you know you have leftovers and it’s not unusual. It’s okay to keep them in the refrigerator for two or three days to eat on them, but once that third day rolls in, you may want to consider discarding them.
Melanie: What if you were to keep the potato salad like in a bucket of ice, you know the way you might keep shrimp or something on a bowl of ice or on a plate of ice? Does that help?
Sandy: That can help, but the problem with that is usually you are out of your element if you are picnicking in a park or if you are elsewhere you can’t control how fast that ice is melting. You definitely don’t want to put raw meat on ice or cheeses on ice not in a container. It’s very difficult to keep - to control the temperature of those things. But that is a method of helping things stay cool longer. You have to make sure you have your handy dandy thermometer to make sure that that temperature doesn’t fall below, and you want to immediately cook or immediately serve. You don’t want to trust your ice, because if is in 90-degree weather, that ice is going to melt pretty quickly.
Melanie: Well it sure is and I’m somebody who likes to put out smaller portions and keep refilling as opposed to putting out the bigger portion that just kind of sits out there. You mentioned cheese. Being a dairy product and all, but people seem to think that cheese is kind of indestructible. And can that grow bacteria too?
Sandy: Absolutely. Very quickly. It you think about it, cheese in order to make it, sometimes you need bacteria to make the cheese itself. But basically, I do like to remind folks that cheese, any kind of dairy product will go bad very quickly and things grow considerably and then depending on your guests, if you have got babies, pregnant moms, people that are elderly, just a little bit of some of that bacteria can really cause a lot of discomfort. So, cheese is not infallible. You want to make sure you keep it as cool as you possibly can, 40 degrees, and you don’t leave it out for longer than two hours.
Melanie: What about if you pre-grill something like you grill it partly and you are going to a party and you don’t want to have to spend 40 minutes cooking a piece of chicken, so you sort of start it and then you bring it in a metal tin or something to put on the grill. Is that safe or is partial cooking, transport and then finishing cooking not a good idea?
Sandy: The only difficulty with that would be you would have to really make sure that you maintain that temperature and sometimes in the midst of the fun and the partying; if you are not got your attention on your cooking and your food; it’s very easy to contaminate or have your food to become contaminated. So, cooking food partially and not letting all the bacteria get killed; you run a risk. You run a bit of a risk that the food will continue to cook a little bit. It will start to cool down, which will make it a nice medium for bacteria. If you don’t have that in a refrigerator somewhere, you are going to definitely courting some issues there with temperature. I usually will recommend that you go ahead and cook it in its entirety and then go ahead and reheat later. Partially cooking it and then finishing cooking it, you are risking the potential for bacteria.
Melanie: People hear Sandy, about e coli, salmonella, all of these things and even with spinach or salads, romaine recently in the media, vegetables and nobody thinks of vegetables as being something that you really have to worry about. Does leaving them in the sun and this is a myth I guess I want you to clear up. Does leaving something in the sun, can that cause e coli or salmonella or is that something that had to come on it to begin with and it’s a matter of washing or not eating it at all?
Sandy: The bottom line is, if you think about it, when you go to get your vegetables from the grocery store, if you are going and they are running water over it; you’re not sure that the vegetables have been thoroughly washed and then you are not sure what’s happened in the transport or those vegetables. So, that’s the reasoning behind you want to go ahead and wash them again thoroughly when you get home. A lot of times, people will buy a bag of vegetables and they will say oh, the bag says I don’t have to wash them, they have already been prewashed. Even if the bag says they are prewashed; I highly recommend that you go ahead and wash them again. Leaving vegetables out in the sun again, if you have got a 90-degree day, longer than two hours I don’t recommend it. Bacteria pretty much can grow in any type of food source. And if you have got water hanging out on that and most of when we eat vegetables, we usually have something else on that vegetable. We have a dip, or we might have had lettuce and we might have cut up a few things and added to that lettuce to make a salad. Well those things two can promote bacteria as well. So, when you make a salad, make it a rule, it’s safer to put the salad out, let everyone enjoy it, when everyone is finished eating, you want to make sure that you put that salad away if you have got leftover salad within the two-hour time frame. And with any vegetables that you purchase from a grocery store; you want to make sure that when you get them home that you clean them, you wash them, you dry them properly. They can grow and do grow bacteria. Because those vegetables, they take a pretty long trip to get to you to the grocery store from where they are coming from.
Melanie: Well, I think that’s the main message is that we have to look at our utensils, wash our hands, not use the same sheets that you put your raw meat or fish on for cooking as the one you going to use for serving and wash all your vegetables even if the bag says all prewashed and it’s really great information for all of food safety Sandy. So, thank you so much for being with us today. This is Health Talks with HRH, Hendricks Regional Health. For more information please visit www.hendricks.org, that’s www.hendricks.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks for tuning in.