A Foodie’s Guide to Clean and Safe Eating

Food Safety

Do you seek out highly recommended food places in blog sites? Fond of taking delectable Instagram shots of your delicious dish? Do you do food reviews and post them in social media? Chances are, you are a foodie! Foodies are adventurous food seekers. But before you recommend that restaurant to your friends and followers, make sure you’re recommending clean and safe dining places.

A lot of people today fall ill due to food-borne diseases from contaminated food, so it’s important for foodies to look for restaurants that don’t just offer the best tasting food but also have best practices in food handling and safety.

When evaluating the right restaurants to eat at, or even when preparing your own food at home, there are important facts to remember and dos and don’ts to obey:

1. Food must be stored properly. Acidity, temperature, time, oxygen, and moisture are factors that contribute to microbial growth. Certain foods need specific storage conditions. Containers should have labels that indicate their shelf life or expiry dates. Raw and cooked foods must be segregated so they do not contaminate each other. 


2. Make sure the food preparation area is clean and sanitary. Preparation and storage areas of food should be cleaned at all times. Even the ceilings, walls, counters, and floors of kitchens must be regularly disinfected to make sure they are free of possible contaminants. Different cleaning sponges and wipes should be used for dishes, kitchen counters, and tables. Different utensils must be used to handle raw meat and vegetables and must never be interchanged. One tell-tale sign of a clean and safe food environment is the absence of pests like cockroaches, flies and mice anywhere in the premises. Notice as well if the servers who clean and wait on table use clean cloths to wipe your table or are they just spreading the germs while they wipe your table “clean”?


3. Restaurant staff should look neat and be trained for personal cleanliness. Look at how the waiters and other service staff are dressed. Are their clothes and personal appearance clean? For some fast foods, the staff uniform should consist of hair net, apron, and gloves depending on their tasks. Servers must follow a systematic procedure of washing and sanitizing their hands every 15 minutes. The spread of bacteria, and worse viruses, should be prevented. Sanitizers must always be available in the food preparation area and in the rest rooms as well.


4. Make sure to buy or consume food from dining places that are reputable and have the proper accreditation and clearance from public health authorities. A quick tip, try to notice the walls of the restaurants if they have their certificates up there. Restaurants and food outlets you can trust use the newest technology in food safety that can help them verify the quality of raw ingredients, ensure the food safety of their production environment and equipment, and prescribe the proper solutions that can make them claim food safety for their products and outlets.

Foodie or not, everyone should have sufficient food safety awareness. Prior to going on that next food escapade, whether bite-size breaks, urban food safaris, or an all-out cookout at home, keep the above tips and guide in mind.

3M Petrifilm Plates, 3M Microbial Luminescence System, and 3M Clean-Trace Hygiene Monitoring Systems are some of the modern and high-technology tools that reputable food chains and manufacturers use to help maintain the highest food safety standards in their business. For more information, visit www.3M.com/ph or Like 3M Philippines and 3M Philippines Food Safety on Facebook for news and updates.