How to Identify Harmful Food to Prevent Food Poisoning
Introduction: A continuous stream of food safety issues can easily lead to disappointment and fear. In this environment where problems are constantly emerging, how can we identify problematic food and protect the health of ourselves and our families? Today, the editor will teach everyone how to identify these problematic foods.
■ Preventing Food Poisoning in the Summer
As the weather gets hotter day by day, emergency departments in major hospitals encounter several food poisoning incidents daily.
Human hands come into contact with a variety of things every day, picking up many bacteria, viruses, and even parasite eggs. Citizens should develop the habit of washing their hands before eating to reduce the risk of getting sick through the mouth.
Washing hands is simple, but many people do not wash their hands scientifically, or even know how to do it correctly. Staff from the drug supervision department demonstrated the steps for scientific handwashing to the public.
First, wet your hands with running tap water, then apply soap or hand sanitizer. Rub your palms together for at least 20 seconds to create a rich lather. The rubbing methods include palm against palm, fingers interlaced with palm against back, fingers interlaced with palm against palm, and rotating the thumbs in the palm.
After rubbing, rinse your hands thoroughly. Finally, dry your hands with a paper towel or use a hand dryer.
When cooking at home, you should not only wash your hands before cooking but also after interrupting cooking to do other things. After handling raw foods like fish and meat, you should also wash your hands before touching other foods.
● Cooked Foods and Cold Dishes Are Also Dangerous
Citizens often believe that eating cold dishes can easily lead to food poisoning, while cooked foods are much safer. This is not actually the case. When cooked food cools to an edible temperature, bacteria and other microorganisms begin to multiply. The longer it sits, the greater the danger. For safety's sake, it is best to eat cooked food while it is still hot.
If you prepare cooked food in advance or save leftovers, if the storage time exceeds 4 hours, you must remember to store these foods at temperatures above 60°C or below 10°C to prevent bacterial growth.
Proper storage temperatures for cooked food can only slow down bacterial growth, not kill the bacteria. Before eating again, the cooked food must be reheated to a temperature of at least 70°C.
● Thaw Frozen Meat Before Cooking
Many foods are often contaminated with bacteria, and thorough heating can kill most of them. When heating, remember that all parts of the food must reach a temperature of 70°C or higher. For example, when boiling chicken, if the area near the bone is still raw, it should be returned to the pot until fully cooked.
Frozen meat and fish taken from the refrigerator can heat unevenly when cooked. Therefore, frozen meat must be thoroughly thawed before cooking. There are many ways to thaw it, such as letting it thaw naturally in the kitchen or using a microwave oven.
■ How to Eat Leftovers Safely
When foreigners host a meal, it is considered an honor to eat everything clean, indicating that the host has ordered dishes to the guests' taste. The opposite is true in Chinese culture. If all the dishes on the table are finished, the host will lose face and is often thought to have ordered too little. To avoid this awkwardness, hosts often order excessively, leaving a full table of food at the end of the meal.
What to do with a table full of leftovers? You have to pack them. Don't underestimate packing; it's a science in itself. Not all leftover foods are suitable for packing. Cold dishes are not suitable because they are not heated during preparation and can easily contain bacteria. Packing them home and eating them later can easily lead to food poisoning. Vegetables are also not suitable for packing because they are rich in vitamins, which are rapidly lost upon repeated heating. They may still look like vegetables, but they have lost their nutritional value. Foods suitable for packing are cooked foods that can be reheated multiple times.
Leftovers brought home should be stored separately. Because different foods have different bacterial growth rates, storing them together can easily lead to cross-contamination.
The storage time for leftovers should not span more than one meal. Leftovers from breakfast should be eaten at lunch, and leftovers from lunch should be eaten at dinner. It's best to eat them within 5-6 hours. In general, food heated to 100°C can kill most pathogenic bacteria within a certain period. However, if food is stored for too long, bacteria will multiply and release a large amount of toxins. Even upon reheating, these toxins cannot be completely destroyed or broken down.
When eating packed food, reheat it or use a microwave. During heating, the center temperature of the food should reach 70°C or higher. This is because a refrigerator is not a "sterile box"; it can only inhibit bacterial growth, not kill bacteria. If not thoroughly heated before consumption, it can easily cause bacterial infection and lead to diarrhea.
The heating time should be controlled to 4-5 minutes. You can also add seasonings like wine, ginger, or garlic to the food. This not only enhances the flavor but also helps kill bacteria.
■ Identifying Inferior Foods: Remember the "Five-Character Method"
Inferior foods are like rats crossing the street—everyone wants to get rid of them, but they are difficult to identify in daily shopping. At the launch ceremony of the Food Safety Publicity Week, staff introduced the basic characteristics of inferior foods and summarized the "Five-Character Method" to help citizens identify them. These five characters are "Yàn, Bái, Xiǎo, Dī, Sàn".
● First, guard against "Yàn" (Vivid/Colorful): Be wary of foods with overly vivid colors. For example, strawberries that are unnaturally large, red, and shiny, like wax; or reed leaves for zongzi that are abnormally green and do not fade over time. These may indicate excessive use of coloring agents.
● Second, guard against "Bái" (White): If a food has an abnormally or unnaturally white color, it is highly likely to contain excessive amounts of bleaching agents, brighteners, flour treatment agents, and other chemicals.
● Third, guard against "Xiǎo" (Small/From Small Workshops): Be wary of foods processed in small workshops. These foods have the lowest qualification rates, and shocking food safety incidents often occur in such places.
● Fourth, guard against "Dī" (Low): Foods that are too cheap often have hidden problems.
● Fifth, guard against "Sàn" (Loose/Unpackaged): "Sàn" refers to loose or unpackaged foods. Some unpackaged bean products, cooked foods, pickled vegetables, etc., sold in some wet markets may come from underground processing factories.
■ How to Identify Problematic Pork
● Tips for Identifying Healthy vs. Diseased Pork
First, look at the pig's skin. Healthy pork has no spots, while the skin of a diseased pig often has red hemorrhagic points, or may show red or yellow rashes.
You can also look at the muscle. Healthy pork is elastic, bright, and glossy, with a light red color, and no blood seeps from the cut surface. Diseased pork is less elastic, the muscle is dark red, and blood often seeps from the cut surface.
The fat of healthy pork is white or milky white and has a sheen. The fat of diseased pork is pale red or yellow and lacks a sheen.
In addition, when purchasing fresh raw meat, citizens should buy from formal wet markets, specialty shops, or large supermarkets. Do not buy fresh meat sold by street vendors. When purchasing fresh meat, check if the vendor has a "Qualified Animal Product Quarantine Certificate". In Zhengzhou, for example, each pig has one certificate, while cattle, sheep, and poultry have one certificate per stall.
● How to Identify Sow Meat
According to food safety management regulations, sow meat cannot be eaten directly. This is because sow meat contains substances harmful to the human body called immunoglobulins. The content is especially high in sows before giving birth, and consumption can easily lead to anemia.
Furthermore, during the growth and lactation periods, sows are given large amounts of drugs that remain in their bodies. Due to the high levels of estrogen in sow meat, frequent consumption by children and adolescents can affect their normal physical development.
Sow meat has low nutritional value and a poor taste. The skin of a sow is thicker than that of a normal pig, with larger pores and muscle fibers, and a gamey smell. The cross-section has large granules. The lean part is dark red, darker than normal pork. When cutting, sow meat is very tough and tends to roll away from the knife, commonly known as "rolling knife meat".
● How to Identify Injected Water Pork
Normal fresh meat has a glossy appearance with even red color and white fat; the surface is slightly dry. Injected water meat lacks luster and has a wet, shiny surface.
Normal fresh meat, when cut, does not release water from the cut surface. Injected water meat has water at the cut surface, which may sometimes drip along the knife.
Press a normal piece of paper against the meat surface. Normal meat has some stickiness, making the paper difficult to peel off. Injected water meat is not sticky, and the paper falls off easily.
Press a piece of toilet paper against freshly cut meat, hold it tightly, and after it gets wet, tear it off and try to light it. If it ignites, it means there is oil on the paper and the meat has not been injected with water. If it does not ignite, it is injected water meat.
■ Removing Pesticide Residues from Vegetables
Four methods can be used:
● Running Water Rinsing Method
Rinsing vegetables repeatedly with clean water can basically remove most pesticide residues.
● Alkaline Water Soaking Method
First, wash off surface dirt from the vegetables, then soak them in alkaline water. Typically, add 5 to 10 grams of alkali to 500 ml of water. Soak for 5-15 minutes, then rinse with clean water and repeat 3-5 times.
● Storage Method
Pesticide residues on vegetables can break down slowly. For non-perishable vegetables like winter melon and pumpkin, you can store them for a week before eating.
● Hot Water Method
Some vegetables and fruits can have some pesticide residues removed by hot water. This method is often used for celery, spinach, green peppers, cauliflower, and beans. First, wash off surface dirt with clean water, then blanch in boiling water for 2-5 minutes, remove, and rinse with clean water 1-2 times.
■ For Your Health, Do Not Eat Wild Game
After eating chicken, duck, fish, and meat all day, it's easy to get tired of it. Some "foodies" then get wild ideas and go to the suburbs to eat wild game to satisfy their cravings.
In fact, traditional Chinese dietary culture advocates "five grains as nourishment, five livestock as supplements, five fruits as aids, and five vegetables as fillers." Eating wild game has never been considered a mainstream part of this culture.
The foods we commonly eat today are the result of our ancestors paying a great price over thousands of years of continuous selection and elimination. Yet, eating wild game has become a trend. Snakes, locusts, wild geese, badgers, and others have become sought-after delicacies. These "delicacies" on the dinner table have not undergone health inspections before being cooked and served, making people who eat them very likely to get sick.
The current environmental pollution is quite severe, and wild animals suffer greatly from it. Some toxic substances accumulate in their bodies. Consuming such wild animals undoubtedly poses a threat to one's own health.
In addition, many animals harbor bacteria or viruses, posing a threat to consumers. The SARS outbreak in 2003 was suspected by experts to be related to eating wild game.
Wildlife carries various bacteria and parasites that cannot be completely killed even by high temperatures. Many people have contracted parasitic diseases like cysticercosis, paragonimiasis, and schistosomiasis from eating wild game. Take snakes and frogs, for example. Some people often drink snake blood and snake gall wine. Snake toxins include neurotoxins that can cause limb numbness and hemotoxins that can cause unstoppable bleeding, but people know little about this.
Frogs, also known as "field chickens," contain double-pored tapeworms. These parasites are not easily killed by high temperatures. After being eaten, they can settle in a person's eyes, kidneys, abdomen, wrists, and calves. These parasites specifically destroy human cells. Once they enter the eyeballs, they can likely lead to reduced vision or even blindness in both eyes.
Even more frightening is that poachers often use toxic bait to hunt wild animals. People who eat them may be in danger of their lives.