Wash Your Hands Before A Meal
This Tiger Tuesday with Thanksgiving in just a couple of days, we take a look at Tiger Bites Req2. and ask the question; Why is it important to wash our hands before a meal?
Your hands can spread bacteria around the kitchen and onto other food. Washing your hands prior to preparing your meal and after each time you touch raw foods helps eliminate this bacteria to travel from surface to surface or food to food. Not only do we want to keep our hands clean while preparing and eating food, we want to keep our workstations and prep areas clean.
Time that you should wash your hands:
before starting to prepare food
after touching raw food such as meat, poultry, and vegetable
after going to the toilet
after touching the trash bin
after touching pets
Just imagine that you pet your dog who was just cleaning himself and decided to lick your hands also, then you walked over to the kitchen and started to prepare the turkey by rubbing butter all over the skin to give it that nice crisp finish when its done cooking. While the bird is in the oven, a quick potty time break after which you start to prepare your relish tray by chopping vegetable and mixing some ranch mix into the sour cream… Time to eat! Grab your turkey leg and start chowing down like Cro-Magnon! During this whole dramatization of Thanksgiving day, what are the chances of getting some type of food born illness / sickness? When did any washing of hands take place? When should any washing of hands take place?
It may be a gross example… but you would be surprised how often we decide to not wash our hands after one of the five suggestions from above. Just hang out by the sink of the restroom the next time your in an airport… really gross… especially when that individual who decided to not wash their hands for the sake of time ends up sitting next to you for the 3 hour flight. True story, happened to me a few years ago. Still scarred for life.
Some studies show that using liquid soap is better than using bar soap… but also bar soap is better than no soap. You want to wash with soap for no less than 20 seconds (sing the ABC’s slowly) with warm water. And make sure to dry your hands. Wet hands transfer bacteria faster.
Have fun teaching your Tiger Scouts about washing hands. Make an activity out of learning the importance of washing hands by having them make rice crispy treats. Mixing only with their hands (make sure the mallow is cooled down to touch). Use this opportunity as they mix the marshmallow into the cereal that the little pieces sticking to their hands are just like germs and bacteria who are also really sticky.
Just don’t eat the real germs and bacteria off your hands! Oh ya… Wash your hands before making your treat! :)