Cooking Safely: A Culinary Cornerstone -Part 1
What is food safety?
If you’ve ever worked in food service, you have definitely heard this term: food safety. You probably got a crash course in it, or even had to sit through one of those cheesy Servsafe videos. Food safety is such an important concept that wherever you live, it is probably regulated locally. It is definitely regulated at a city and state level, at a national level and yes, even at an international level!
So what is it? Why was it the very first class I had to take in culinary school?
Food safety refers to a series of best practices designed to prevent the spread of foodborne disease. Foodborne disease is the swanky word for food poisoning. Praying to the porcelain god. Just kill me now. No-please-not-again-there’s-nothing-left! You know, that stuff.
Food poisoning can come from a series of hazards, such as chemicals, physical hazards-like glass or nails in your food, but the vast majority are of a biological (living) origin and the main culprit is bacteria. If you’re interested in learning more about what bacteria actually is, check out my food science post A Friendly Guide to Bacteria.
Ultimately, the vast majority of food safety guidelines are designed to prevent, destroy or control bacteria.
Why is Food Safety Important?
As mentioned above, food safety is designed to prevent foodborne illness. Most of us have experienced some form of food poisoning or another. If you’re lucky, it was on the mild end such as a bit of nausea or spending a bit longer scrolling your phone on the toilet, but on the extreme end, foodborne illness can be fatal.
Food safety is particularly important if you are food prepping. I think food prepping is great! That’s why I have a whole site dedicated to it. It can help you maintain food budget, lose weight if that’s what you’re interested in, improve food choices and general health and nutrition, and also remove some of the weekday stress to really help bring some zen in your life. However, the more steps and time between cooking your food and eating it, the more opportunity there is for foodborne illness.
Again, that is not to say you shouldn’t food prep, just make sure you follow proper caution when it comes to cooling and storing your food. All things I’ll take about later.
A final note on why food safety is important. There are parts of the population that are considered vulnerable. These are groups of people that for different reasons are particularly susceptible to foodborne illness. That is to say, getting food poisoning could have serious long term effects, or even lead to death.
These groups of people are: the elderly, children younger than 5 years old, pregnant women, immunocompromised, and people suffering from certain chronic diseases. If you fall in this group or are cooking for somebody in this group it is particularly important that you make a concerted effort to prepare food safely.
I know what you’re thinking, “Ok, I get it, I’m in. You sold me on it! Now, how do I cook safely?” For that, you’ll have to check out part 2! Sorry, I know, I really did intent to make this all one post. As I was writing it it just became too long.
