What are surfaces that touch food? It’s a good question. Contaminants in the air can affect how our bodies smell, taste and feel. It also calls for safety measures that include avoiding the following when handling food. Surfaces generally come into contact with food during preparation, packaging or cooking for hygienic reasons. Therefore, any surfaces that will come into contact with food should be cleaned.
Any surfaces that will come into contact with food should also be sanitized first: This is best done using antibacterial kitchen ware and utensils to ensure sanitation and safety. Cleaning these surfaces that touch food are called primary cleaning. They include washing under surfaces that touch food like fryers, griddles, tables and cutting boards. The cooking surfaces, hot plate surfaces, frypans, barbecue surfaces should also be washing using sanitizer cleaners. For secondary cleaning, food contact surfaces can be cleaned using disinfectant sprays.
When there are surfaces: that will come into contact with food during food processing, clean them first. Sanitizing the surfaces that touch food is a must to prevent contamination. After cleaning these surfaces, dry them with paper towels. Food contact surfaces like tubs, cooking counters, slicers, peelers, fryers should be cleaned using disinfectant sprays as well as sanitizing pads. Sanitizing can be done using chlorine bleach, borax and even oxygen.
While there are many utensils available in the market today: many of them are not hygienic and may cause harm to the consumers’ health when used. If you want to purchase utensils for food processing then you must go for those that are hygienic and provide good quality. Select utensils that are made of stainless steel or other metals that cannot cause any harm to your health. In addition, you may also consider hand washing after every use.
After you have cleaned and dried the food contact surfaces: they should be rewashed using hot water and dishwashing liquid for removing the remaining microbes that exist in them. This process is known as sanitization. These surfaces are sanitized by reintroducing the good microorganisms that had been killed earlier by the sanitizing solution. These microorganisms help in reducing the number of bacteria that survive inside the containers that have been used for storing food.
The surfaces that touch food preparation should always be kept dry: For this purpose, the use of kitchen towels or kitchen mats can be considered. These mats are designed in such a way that they absorb all the moisture, sweat and heat, and at the same time reduce the chances of infection occurring on these surfaces when the food preparation is being done.
