Feeding your toddler – safe food, safe water

Monitoring Food Safety – at home and away

The media cover a rash of food poisoning cases involving undercooked fast food ham burgers; suddenly everyone in the country is cooking their burgers ‘well’. The media report on a poisoning case involving raw seafood; suddenly, everyone’s avoiding clams and oysters. They headline a salmonella outbreak; suddenly, everyone’s ordering their eggs hard-cooked.

Unfortunately, when the immediate scare is over, the general public’s concern over the food contamination seems to fade with the headlines. Yet food safely should be an ongoing concern of anyone who prepare food especially for toddlers. Though only a few make headlines there are many thousands of cases of foodborne illness in Britain each year, some which result in death.

Protecting your family from contamination food is not difficult – and it’s well worth the effort.
Here’s how

• Wash hands with soup and warm water before handling food.
• When shopping and using foods, pay attention to ‘sell-by’ and ’use-by’ dates. Don’t use products beyond the ‘use-by’ date.
• Don’t trust your nose to tell you when food is spoiled. Though you can often smell the decay they cause you can’t smell bacteria; and food can cause illness before it begins smelling ‘off.
• Wash fruits and vegetables thoroughly. Wash the rind of the cantaloupe with washing up liquid, hot water and a brush when the bring it into the house (the rind can harbour salmonella, which can cause serious illness). Wash any surface that the melon touched before it was washed and be sure it’s been washed before you cut.

Source: Whattoexpect – the toddlers years.
Authors: Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg & Sandee Hathaway.