Want to avoid food poisoning? Focus on temperature and time.
That's the advice Louis Cooper, director of environmental health for the Weber-Morgan Health Department, has for those who want to keep their food down after dinner. While some things are out of our control, such as the way others prepare food for us, we can be vigilant in our own kitchens, he said.
Keeping hot things hot, cold things cold and cooking them to the proper temperature will help keep nasty bacteria away.
"There are foods that 10 years ago I wouldn't have flinched if you had kept them out on the counter longer than usual," Cooper said. "Beans and rice are a good example. But today? I'm going to tell you to keep them at the proper temperature and store them as soon as possible if you don't want to get deathly ill."
Each year, roughly 48 million people get sick because of something they ate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those poisoned, nearly 128,000 land in the hospital, and 3,000 die.
People are sickened with a variety of food-borne illnesses that include salmonella, listeria, E. coli 0157, campylobacter, and a new strain of E coli -- called 0104 -- that was found in raw fenugreek sprouts. The new strain killed 47 people in Germany and France last spring, and sickened thousands more.
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