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During the holiday season the kitchen takes center stage as the heart of the home. However, kitchen mishaps can inadvertently contaminate your meal and cause illness. This is particularly important if you’re preparing meals for adults 65 or older who are more vulnerable to serious complications from foodborne illness.
“A younger person might just get sick for 24 or 48 hours and not feel good,” says Jennifer Quinlan, a professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “But with older adults, it could potentially become a systemic infection; they can end up in the hospital.” Children under 5, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems are also at higher risk of severe cases of food poisoning.
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Here are 10 tips from food-safety experts that every holiday chef should follow to prevent mistakes in the kitchen that can lead to a foodborne illness.
1. Wash your hands.
There can be a lot going on in the kitchen while juggling a holiday meal. So, it’s important to make sure to wash your hands often and thoroughly for 20 seconds with soap and water, especially before and after handling raw seafood and meat, advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A simple slip like placing a cooked dish on the table immediately after touching raw meat without washing your hands can easily spread germs.
2. Wash fruits and vegetables.
Even if you plan to peel or cut fruits and vegetables, wash them first to avoid germs on their surface from being transferred to the flesh of the produce by the knife or peeler. Make sure to rinse all produce under running water. Use a clean vegetable brush to scrub firm fruits and vegetables like avocados or melons.
3. Don’t wash your holiday turkey.
Washing your holiday turkey in the sink before you cook it runs the risk of cross contamination by splashing and spreading germs from the raw turkey to your hands, countertop or other foods, says Brigette Gleason, medical epidemiologist with the CDC. The same goes for washing other raw poultry and meats. Cooking meat and poultry to the correct safe internal temperature will kill any dangerous bacteria without the need for washing.
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