The five second rule - True or False?
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has marked this week as Food Safety Week and with a major E. coli incident ongoing in Europe, it is a timely reminder to everyone of the importance of food safety.
Schools in particular have an important duty of care where growing and sometimes vulnerable children and young people are concerned.
To investigate what people think good hygiene is, the FSA asked 2,000 people whether they thought a range of statements about food safety were true or false [pdf]. Their research showed that most people are aware of good hygiene in the kitchen, but there are still some common misconceptions about food safety.
More than half of people believe that they can tell if a food is safe to eat just by its appearance or smell - which is wrong. Potentially dangerous bugs like E. coli don’t always make food smell bad and do not affect the appearance or taste of food.
More than a third of people thought that the ‘use by’ dates on food packaging were to encourage us to throw things out so we have to buy more. However the ‘use by’ date is required by law and is an important indicator of how long a food will remain safe to eat. Other dates, such as the ‘best before’ and ‘sell by’ dates relate to the food’s quality rather than its safety.
Two thirds (65%) of people incorrectly thought that you need to wash chicken and poultry before you cook it and one in ten adults believe that if you drop food on the floor, it is safe to eat as long as you pick it up within five seconds. This rises to one in five (21%) of Londoners who believe it is true.
The FSA says that there are about a million cases of food poisoning every year in the UK and as we have seen in Germany, some can be very dangerous indeed.
Knowledge and understanding are the keys to preventing misconceptions arising and the Basic Food Hygiene course found within the EduCare for Education online learning service is the solution for anyone who has a duty of care to others in relation to the safe preparation of food.
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