Exercising the best guidelines when preparing food is just as important for Type 2 diabetics as making the right food choices. Having healthy food on hand is useless if you contaminate it by not preparing it properly. In this last installment of the two-part series, we give you some simple food safety tips to follow when preparing food.
1. Take caution when opening packages. Boxed ingredients need to be free of dust, dirt or other debris that could have become attached during shipping. This is especially true with canned goods. Make sure the lid of the can is completely clean before opening.
2. Don't cross-contaminate. Cross-contamination occurs when one food is inadvertently mixed with another food. A prime example of this is using a knife to cut up chicken and then using the same knife to cut up vegetables. This can also occur when you are handling certain foods an individual might have an allergy to such as eggs, peanuts or seafood. These food allergies can easily be passed from one food to another simply by cross-contamination.
3. Another way that contamination can take place is through cutting boards. While cleaning a cutting board between foods is a good idea, it isn't the ideal solution to preventing cross-contamination. Why? Because some types of cutting boards, such as those made of wood, are porous and therefore, can allow bacteria to seep down into the surface through tiny fissures. This is why it is best to have cutting boards which are designated for preparing different food types. For example, one cutting board should only be used for meat, another only for vegetables and fruits, etc.
4. The final step in safe food preparation is to cook foods thoroughly. Simply trying to "eye" it to see if something is sufficiently cooked is asking for trouble. This particularly pertains to raw meat, eggs and seafood... all of which are susceptible to a wide array of contamination during processing.
The best idea is to go by federal guidelines as far as how much the internal temperature of a food should be when appropriately cooked. These guidelines are very specific as to what the internal temperature should be to help prevent illness which can result from insufficiently cooked foods. If an individual chooses to eat meat that is rare, or even medium rare, then they must also be willing to take the possible consequences from their choice.
Research indicates between 7 million to 33 million cases of illness are diagnosed every year in the United States, due to bacteria, viruses, yeasts, molds, and parasites spoiling food. As well, approximately 9000 deaths occur annually due to these pathogens.
Type 2 diabetes is not a condition you must just live with. By making easy changes to your daily routine, its possible to protect your heart, kidneys, eyes and limbs from the damage often caused by diabetes, and eliminate some of the complications you may already experience. Taking care with food preparation will also help to avoid health issues.
For nearly 25 years Beverleigh Piepers has searched for and found a number of secrets to help you build a healthy body. Go to http://DrugFreeType2Diabetes.com to learn about some of those secrets.
The answer isn't in the endless volumes of available information but in yourself.
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