Food Safety for Kids

What is Food Safety?

Food safety is a scientific discipline which deals with the proper handling, cooking, and storage of food commodities. This scientific discipline prevents foodborne illnesses among people. According to the CDC(Centers for Disease Control), 48 million people get sick from foodborne illnesses globally. Food safety is a major concern globally. Now lets move to the food safety for kids review.

How Germs Enter the Food?

According to the current predicaments, we can say that food safety is not just related to food industries. Food safety is also connected to kitchens. There are many ways through which germs enter into the food in our kitchens. Food safety issues in our kitchens can result in the spread of foodborne illnesses among children.

Sources through which Germs Enter in Food

Sr. #	Sources	Functions
1	From nose, mouth, and hands	There are many germs affiliated with our nose, mouth, and hands. So, improper body hygiene culture can lead to the transmission of germs from the body to food.
2	From food to hand to food	Germs can enter food due to bad handling of raw materials and cooked foods together.

Some Kitchen Contamination Gadgets

There is also a lot of kitchen equipment that cause food safety issues and highly effect on food safety for kids. Some pieces of equipment are as follow:

Cutting boards	Garbage disposals
Knife	Countertops
Can openers	Blenders

Food Safety Guidelines

According to the Australian Institute of Food safety some basic guidelines for food safety culture are as follow:

• Proper cleaning and sanitizing of all surfaces and equipment
• Development of personal hygiene culture
• The effective pest control system
• Good time and temperature control for food cooking and storage

Teaching Food Safety to Children’s

Foodborne illnesses can be reduced by teaching children about food safety and issues with a practical role model. We should teach our children about the nasty things and how bacterias are dangerous for us. Children should get the proper training to avoid food poisoning.

Children do whatever they see. They mostly follow practical examples. We should become a role model for them. Show them effective food safety behaviour by doing them yourself. These practices include the following things:

• Good kitchen hygiene practices
• personal hygiene practices
• Good hand washing practices
• Good practices to select the food products with a maximum use-by date
• Stacking food items correctly in the fridge

Educating Kids Towards Food Safety in Homes

Parents should let the children enter into the kitchen and learn proper hygiene culture practically. Children can learn a lot about cooking strategies and other techniques. The kitchen is the main place in the house where food safety issues start.

Children can learn proper hygiene management, personal hygiene culture, and food hazards control in the kitchen. They can also learn the proper time and temperature for cooking to kill bacterias. These actions can be proved dangerous but proper precautions are necessary for effectiveness.

Training of Children to Prevent Food Hazards

There are many practical ways through which we can provide a practical view to our children to prevent food hazards. These guidelines that are mentioned below can be proved very effective and helpful to avoid the food safety hazards at the domestic level. These guidelines can improve the food safety culture and ameliorate the food safety issues that are linked with domestic chores. The detail information of the guidelines are as follow:

Sr. #	Operation	Functions
1	Involve the kids at the supermarket	To check the use-by dates. To check the packaging. To check the freshness of vegetables. To check the crack eggs in the cartoons.
2	Train children in stacking the fridge	Train them to place the medicines, eggs, and butter packets in the door of the fridge. Train them to store the raw meat and seafood at the bottom of the fridge. Keep liquid products on the top shelf to avoid cross-contamination.
3	Train children in cooking and cleaning of kitchen	Train them for proper hand washing. Train them to use separate chopping and cutting boards. Train them to properly dress including the proper use of personal protective equipment (PPEs).
4	Safe and sound school lunch	Encourage children to discard leftover food. Encourage children to eat perishable items first. Train your children to save the lunch from the direct exposure of light. Train them to take water in clean bottles and don’t give water bottles to anyone.

5 Steps for Proper Hand washing of Kids

Hands are also a source of food contamination and they are also involved in the spread of foodborne diseases. Parents should properly train their children to effectively clean their hands. There are five major ways of cleaning hands. These five steps are as follow:

Proper Steps for Effective Hand Cleaning

1. Wet your hands with clean water (hot or cold, turn off the tap and start applying soap
2. Lather hands with the soap. Try to lather the backside of your hands, under your nails, and between fingers
3. Scrub Try to scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds
4. Rinse your hands under clean running water
5. Dry your hands with a single service towel or air dryer

Food Safety Games

Teaching food safety to students is fun. We can teach our children the basics of food safety and hygiene management with fun. Hand washing is always great fun for the children. We can sing alphabets song and count for 20 seconds to make sure that children are washing properly and enjoying well. We can also let them sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” during their hand washing.

In a Nutshell

To conclude the whole debate on food safety for kids, in a nutshell, we can say that food safety is a major concern. Food safety prevention is very important for children. Proper training of children is very necessary for effective food safety control domestically. Through all the above-mentioned guidelines, we can train our children to deal with food safety prevention. Children should get training for good hygiene culture and good personal hygiene. There should be an authentic role model for children by parents to follow. Children can be trained with fun about food safety culture. This article can be proved helpful for the training of children for effective prevention of food safety on the domestic level.