When we purchase raw food , no matter small quantity for our family or big quantity for a feast, or a group of people, we ought to maintain the food safety so that we can prepare good and safe food for consumption. If the raw food is deteriorate, the cooked product would be unsafe to be consumed. The followings are the 7 tips to buy safe food...
Tips 1: Plan the raw material procurement. When buying raw food, plan the type of food and the quantity. Things to consider include how many consumers , when to consume, what to buy, the capacity of keeping equipment (refrigerator / freezer). For instance, to prepare food for only 2 persons for 5 days. The space of refrigerator is limited. Knowing this we couldn't buy more foods that need to be stored at refrigerator. Frequent procurement or purchasing of can foods is recommended.
Tips 2: Prepare Cold Box to keep raw material such as chicken, fish and meat. These kind of food is high risk food. It will have bacteria growth if they are not handled properly. Thus, we need to have a cooler box and portable ice to keep the food in cool. The cooler the food, the less bacteria growth occured.
Tips 3: Buy dry food such as dry anchovy, dry chilly or dry prawn before other food. This is because dry food could be kept longer compare to wet food and / or high risk food.
Tips 4: Buy Raw Meats or cold / frozen food (nugget, ice-cream, cheese) at the last purchase. The wet / high risk food is intended to have bacteria growth when it is handled improperly. So, the food could be purchased at last destination before going home / restaurant. This would also shorten the duration of wet / high risk food keeping in warmer temperature.
Tips 5: Isolate the food and non-food goods in separate bags. If all goods are kept in the same plastic bags, cross contamination could happened from non-food goods to food.
Tips 6: Clean and cut the raw food (chicken and meat) according to the usage. Before cooking, it is important to cut the big sizes of meat into smaller parts to ease thorough cooking.
Tips 7: Keep raw material in refrigerator. All food should be kept in refrigerator. When foods are in between 5 - 63oC, bacteria is easily growth on the food and multiply geometrically, especially high risk food. As we saw at the store or fish market, the high risk food are stored in cold or frozen.
With that, we could keep the purchased food in good quality before we cook and consumed them.
Credit : Food Safety and Quality Division, Ministry of Health
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