Food Safety – the intro blog

Food safety might not be the sexiest topic ever, but food safety is important and so many bloggers and cooks ignore it.  Not me!

Everywhere I go, people I met and observe don’t understand the fundamentals when it comes to food safety. This will be the first of several blogs on food safety, and today I’m going to concentrate on some background knowledge on microbes – also known as micro-organisms, germs or bugs.

Microbes are everywhere.  On us. On our pets. On everything we see and touch. They are what scientists call ubiquitous – they are EVERYWHERE. We just can’t see them, at least not without a microscope!

Some microbes are harmful (known as pathogenic) and some are not (known as non-pathogenic). Generally, it is helpful to think about non-pathogenic microbes as the germs that make food go off and pathogenic microbes as the germs that make food unsafe.

Food that has gone off isn’t necessarily unsafe, but it is unsuitable – that is, it will taste awful or smell awful, and often change in texture (e.g. it might have more liquid in it). But more often than not it won’t make you sick.

Pathogenic microbes, when they grow enough, are the ones that make us sick. They have cool names too – Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, and so on. My favourite name is Campylobacter jejuni – try saying that three times quickly!

So the trick is to stop the growth of these pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbes – this means our food lasts longer and won’t make us sick.

Food safety concepts are supposed to ensure that we stop the microbes growing – and there are lots of ways to do this, but there are several basics that we all do everyday (although some people are better at this than others!).

So stay tuned for my next blog as we learn a bit more about food safety and microbes…