Germ warfare
WHEN I WAS COOKING dinner at a friend's house, I opened the refrigerator to get the prawns we had bought from the wet market. The bag of prawns was on the top shelf and liquid from it was dripping into an uncovered dish of butter. In the fridge were other unwrapped items: some dried-out pizza - two slices, still in the pizza box; a container of yoghurt that had lost its lid and with the yoghurt turning green; and an open jar of pasta sauce so old it had started to grow mould.
The kitchen, at first glance, seemed clean - the countertops and cooker were gleaming. But the drawer with utensils was disgusting: everything was sticky with oil and food that had dripped inside.
My friend is into fitness - he works out at the gym almost daily - so it seems astonishing that he doesn't seem to care that what he has in his fridge isn't just unhealthy, it is downright unsanitary.
When we are children, our parents remind us to wash our hands before coming to the dinner table, but how many of us wash before preparing food? How often do we let leftover food sit at room temperature for several hours before putting it away?
When something is turning green and fuzzy or gives off a foul odour, most people will throw it away, although there are the scary ones who scrape aside the mould and eat what is underneath. But food doesn't need to look or smell bad to be harmful. Botulism, found most often in canned foods, cannot be seen, tasted or smelled, but it is one of the deadliest toxins found in food. Other pathogens (organisms that cause illness), such as E.coli, cholera and salmonella, also give no indication of their presence.
Sometimes nothing can be done to avoid food poisoning: if shellfish at a restaurant is off or the cooks there have unsanitary kit-chen habits, the customers will probably get ill. But when cooking at home, there are ways to lessen the chances.
It is essential to wash your hands with warm water and soap before touching food - most food-borne illnesses are passed through person-to-person contact. If the person preparing the food has bacteria or germs on his or her hands, the people eating the food might become ill as well. Frequently wash hand-towels and cloths used for wiping up spills.