Food Safety: Keeping Your Family Healthy
03/24/2010
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By Susan Brady
Published: Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Every day in the news is a new article about a food recall or a case of salmonella bacteria causing widespread illness. While the FDA is reviewing guidelines and working on monitoring situations more closely, there are precautions you can take at home to keep your family safe from food-borne illness.
Many fresh and prepared foods come with an expiration date on the package or can. Oftentimes this can be difficult to find, hard to read, or nonexistent. StillTasty.com is a shelf-life guide that is your one-stop resource for food storage information.
The heart of the StillTasty web site is the “Keep it or Toss It” search engine, which contains shelf-life data for thousands of foods and beverages. Their database contains information obtained from food and beverage manufacturers on optimal storage methods for specific foods and details on storage times as they pertain to both. Just type a food item or ingredient into the search engine to see how long it will keep in the pantry, refrigerator or freezer.
StillTasty also answers everyday questions about storing and handling food. Should you pay attention to expiration dates? Do you have to refrigerate mustard and ketchup? Should you rinse raw chicken before you cook it? You’ll find information on these topics and many more.
Given the cost of feeding your family these days, as well as concerns of overconsumption and unnecessary waste, it’s important to make the best use of each item you buy. But keeping your family from experiencing a food-borne illness is an even more important factor. StillTasty has been going strong for over a year, providing wisdom and counseling on everything from dairy and eggs to meat and poultry and condiments and oils.
If you find yourself sitting on the fence about serving that potato salad or whether to toss those old breadcrumbs, this site has the answers for you, allowing you to save money and keep your family healthy at the same time. (And there is even an iPhone applicaton so you can check things on the go.)
