Cross Contamination

Cooking is a very relaxing and enjoyable hobby. Also, for many people it is a good stress reliever. However, cooking or handling food in general, is no joke. If food is not handled correctly, the person who is going to eat the meal will have a very upset stomach after they eat it. While handling food, the main thing that you want to avoid is cross-contamination. This essay will tell you what cross-contamination is, how it occurs, what happens when you eat contaminated food and how to prevent it. To begin with, what is cross-contamination? Well, cross-contamination is when bacteria from one food is transferred to another and contaminates the other food. Usually, contamination occurs between a raw food and a cooked food, vegetables and meats, or for hygienic reasons. For example, cross-contamination can occur if the juice from raw meat drips on vegetables when it is sitting on the top rack of the refrigerator. After this has happened, the vegetables are now contaminated because the bacteria from the raw meat have now been transferred to the vegetables. Cross-contamination can also occur if the same kitchen utensil touches another food or if the person who is handling the food has not properly washed their hands or cleaned the kitchen space before touching the food. So, what exactly happens when you eat contaminated food? The biggest issue that people have by eating contaminated food is with food poisoning. By eating contaminated food, you are also consuming the bacteria that have contaminated it, which your body may not be able to fight off. Therefore, you end up getting food poisoning. To go into more depth, food poisoning occurs when a person has ingested viruses, bacteria or other parasites that have contaminated a food. Some symptoms of food poisoning are nausea, diarrhea or vomiting, along with dehydration. Sometimes you may feel the symptoms within a few hours or you may even feel them after a couple of days. The doctor may take a blood test