Grilling season is back, here are some food safety tips

SALT LAKE CITY — With warmer weather comes outdoor grilling season, which means it’s time to remind people of some commonly neglected food safety tips.

 

Leftovers

“Pretty much all foods are good for about three to four days in the fridge. The rule of thumb, though, is the quicker you can eat them, the better,” said Delaney Moore, the lead enteric diseases epidemiologist with the Utah Department of Health. “If you can’t remember when you put it in the fridge, that’s always a good idea to toss it.”

For things that you open and put back in the fridge, like a jar of spaghetti sauce, check the label. Moore said most labels will have a “best by” date and a “best if used within (blank) days after opening” sign in small print.

Picnic foods

When it comes to leaving picnic foods outside, it all depends on the temperature. If it’s less than 90 degrees Fahrenheit, the food can be out for about two hours. Anything above that will reduce that time to an hour because the food will heat up much faster.

One way to practice food safety is to avoid the “danger zone.” According to Moore, the danger zone is between 40 degrees Fahrenheit for cold foods and 140 degrees Fahrenheit for hot foods.

“If that food is sitting in the danger zone … for too long, longer than two hours, then all sorts of gross germs really start to grow in there,” Moore said. “Food-related illnesses are very, very common. Most of them don’t get reported to us. So our best guess is that 48 million people each year get some kind of foodborne illness. So that’s one in six Americans every year.”

Although all foods can potentially make people sick, Moore said there are some ways to help prevent that, such as washing fresh fruits and vegetables and using different cutting boards when chopping up raw meats and vegetables.

Four steps to food safety

Moore recommended four steps that all home cooks should follow: Cool, Cook, Clean, and Separate.

“Make sure that your food is cooled properly … Another one that you can think of is cook. You want to make sure you’re cooking foods to the proper temperatures. Make sure they’re all the way done,” Moore said. “Clean is another one. Make sure you’re washing your hands and surfaces often. And then, finally, separate. So make sure, like we talked about earlier, those fruits and vegetables are away from your raw meat.”

For more information on food safety, visit the FDA, USDA, and CDC websites.

Read more from the Let’s Get Moving podcast:

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