Nutrition and Food Safety

		Vickie Vaclavik, PHD, RD/LD Section Editor, Food Safety Assistant Professor, Department of Clinical Nutrition; UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

To Eat Or Not To Eat - That Is The Question
Posted: September 2005
Source: Vickie Vaclavik, PHD, RD/LD

"To be or not to be - that is the question" said Shakespeare many years ago. Well, "to eat or not to eat"- that is OUR question!

Such a question may be interpreted in various manners. For example, we may hope that we 1.) DO eat, and have food available, or 2.) may sit down with our family and friends to enjoy food, or 3.) remain healthy without experiencing foodborne illness from unsafe food. Unfortunately, these aforementioned hopes may become quite uncertain, as we have witnessed in the recent hurricane and flooding on the Gulf Coast . Such a tragedy reminds us of the very basic need humans have for food and drink.

In light of recent events we have become intensely aware that we need to do more than HOPE to eat, or enjoy foods or eat safely. We need to DO something. For example, as a society we may be inspired to take steps toward making food available and safe, with an improved food distribution procedure. However, the emphasis of this author is food safety, and we can each do something to influence that reality too, whether personally or professionally.

We may not be employed as a "food handler", yet we want to become knowledgeable regarding safe food handling. Then we want to apply what we know. Most likely we are familiar with someone who "talks with their mouth full" and another who "says grace" at mealtime. Your reaction as you take note may be "how awful!" to the former or "amen!" to the latter. In addition to the words that proceed from out our mouths, we must look also at what goes in - the food we ingest. While planning for the growing, harvesting, refrigerating, delivering, serving and so forth we must simultaneously enforce our protective strategies. It is the job of societies around the globe to regulate good sanitation for its population.

Disease-causing bacteria and many other illness-causing culprits cannot be seen with the bare eye, and we certainly do not carry a microscope to explore a meal prior to its consumption. So what can we do for our gastro-intestinal safety at mealtime? We need to 1.) watch temperature - keep foods hot or cold, 2.) wash hands often and 3.) avoid spreading germs by cross-contamination. Good practices, and everyday practice of the "right" way to do things lessens the chance of illness.

The world-over, people read Shakespeare, and likewise, throughout the world, people must eat. Let's keep the food safe.

Please view some of the attached websites. You will see what others have done as well as what YOU can do. I know you will find the sites of benefit to your quest for safe food!

Before I close, I would like to leave you with some lighthearted entertainment. At the risk of having you hate quotations, as Ralph Waldo Emerson ("I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." - Ralph Waldo Emerson) here are some wonderful food quotes that I plan to include in an Appendix of the foods laboratory manual that we use in our foods lab at UTSouthwestern.

PERSONS:

• "Don't count your chickens before they are hatched."
  - Aesop
• "A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety."
  - Aesop
• "Food is our common ground, a universal experience."
  - James Beard
• "The secret of good cooking is, first, having a love of it. If you're convinced that cooking is drudgery, you're never going to be good at it, and you might as well warm up something frozen."
  - James Beard
• "I am not a glutton. I am an explorer of food."
  - Erma Bombeck
• "Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart."
  - Erma Bombeck
• "I was thirty-two when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate."
  - Julia Child
• "You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients."
  - Julia Child
• "Cooking is at once one of the simplest and most gratifying of the arts, but to cook well one must love and respect food."
  - Craig Claiborne
• "Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food."
  - Hippocrates
• "Never eat more than you can lift."
  - Miss Piggy
• "Don't be a fuddy-duddy with your hollandaise; be bold, dunk your pretzels in it!"
  - Miss Piggy
• "You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans."
  - Ronald Reagan