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A Guide to Kitchen Hygiene

Hygiene takes the top priority in the kitchen as every process in there culminates in our body one way or the other. Kitchen hygiene is a function of both visual tidiness and pathological cleanliness of the kitchen. But because pathological measure is difficult, true hygiene is inadvertently overlooked by an average kitchen user.

Food gets contaminated during it's production, transportation, storage, preparation, packaging, serving and even consumption. The last few stages are the most vulnerable stages for food because it looses its natural protective cover (fruits and vegetables are peeled) and are exposed to various foreign elements like plastics. And when you handle these stages, it certainly guarantees that food is safe in its most vulnerable stages for contamination.

The only way to ensure kitchen hygiene is to follow certain best practices such as:

1. Avoid the use of synthetics in the kitchen.
2. Separate your kitchen and bathroom.
3. Keep your kitchen clean.
4. Maintain levels of hygiene.

Avoid The Use of Synthetics in Kitchen

There is a maxim that you can't trust food cooked elsewhere. It so happens now that you cannot trust home cooked food as well because of the wide use and wrong handling of synthetics in the kitchen.

All materials wither overtime and break down into smaller particles. Some materials don't have to wait that long because of its sub-optimal quality. However long it takes, plastics and other synthetics leach into food, causing cancer in most cases. Through out this handbook, there are examples of how food get contaminated by synthetics. And there are three here:

1. Consider the use of synthetic ropes for drawing water from wells. They wither overtime and natural elements such as sun and rain only accelerate this withering, weakening the outer fibres of the ropes. When the rope rails down the pulley wheel or moves through your palm, these brittle fibres break and fall into the water, floats unseen on the surface and is drawn out when you draw water. If the water is used for washing food, cooking or drinking, these tiny particles contaminate your body.
2. Consider the use of kitchen clothes made of synthetic fibres like acrylic or polyester. Overtime, the fibres of every cloth unravel from the weave, stick out of the surface and separate upon force. When you use such clothes to wipe the utensils or kitchen slab, or to filter soups and other preparations, or to drain some grains, or in any process in your cooking, you have given a chance for these fibres to get into your system.
3. Consider the use of excessive poisoning chemicals against pests and rodents — especially sprayable poison. The more you use, the more the chances to contaminate surfaces and things (such as kitchen slabs, stove tops and utensils) that you didn't intend to contaminate. Being ignorant of the contamination you use them normally.

There is perhaps no easier way for unwanted chemicals to get into human food chain than through the kitchen. So keep your kitchen from such chemicals and compounds that pose expensive threat when inside your body.

Separation of Kitchen and Bathroom

Bathrooms refer to room with either both shower and toilet facilities. Though the kitchen and bathroom are physically separate facilities in a house, they are often brought together by unhygienic bathroom etiquettes, multi-tasking and shared usage of items.

Some are just ignorant of their bathroom etiquettes while others just choose not to follow them due to lethargy. If you don't wash your hands after using the bathroom and then engage in your kitchen chores, you have essentially bridged the gap between the kitchen and the bathroom.

Some are habituated to multitask kitchen chores and laundry, which in most urban families is carried out in the bathroom. Every trip you make between these two places increases the risk of cross-contamination.

Some maintain their bathrooms so clean that they grow quite comfortable sharing bathroom things with the kitchen — such as mugs and buckets. The factors of hygiene are mostly unseen to the eye. Therefore, such sharing of things is a health risk. This also creates an indirect damage by normalising such unhealthy habits in your subconscious mind. As they say — habits maketh a man (or a woman).

Cleanliness in The Kitchen

An unclean kitchen attracts flies, cockroaches, ants, rats and other pests. They first visit sporadically, and then frequently. /While pests increase the risk of diseases, ants tend to thrive in the house by eating into the physical structure of the house such as the doors, windows, wall tiles, and cabinets, and weakening the house overtime.

Some of the unclean habits seen in the kitchen are as follows.

• Many households leave utensils in the kitchen overnight in order to wash them next morning. While this is safe when practised once in a while, frequent practice will attract cockroaches and rats.
• Many use the kitchen thrash bin without a lid. The vegetable wastes dumped there soon invites flies and cockroaches to the kitchen.

Levels of Hygiene

You can maintain 3 levels of hygiene for easier management — one for cooking and utensils, the other for places like tables, sinks, slabs and stovetops, and the third for the floor. Ensure that you do not share products among these levels.

For instance, some wipe plates and other utensils with the same piece of cloth used for cleaning the dining table, kitchen slabs and stove tops. This is unhygienic because you could transfer wastes from the table, slabs and stove to the utensils. You also risk utensils that stink as cleaning clothes often have a subtle stench.

Conclusion

A hygienic kitchen is a function of pathological safety and visual tidiness of a kitchen. Such a standard might seem impossible, but it is not. By identifying small changes, committing and habituating yourself to it, a hygienic kitchen is an easy goal.

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