Food safety and health tips during the Qingming Festival

The Qingming Festival holiday is approaching, and the temperature is rising. There will be more outdoor activities such as tomb-sweeping, spring outings, and group dinners, and foodborne diseases will enter a high incidence period. Consumers should pay attention to food safety and eat a healthy diet. Here, the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center reminds you as follows:

1. Purchase food ingredients from qualified regular shopping malls, supermarkets or markets.

When purchasing and eating packaged foods, pay attention to the production date, shelf life, etc. Do not purchase and eat "three-no" (no production date or shelf life, factory name, or address) foods or foods that have exceeded their shelf life.

2. Develop good hygiene habits when cooking at home:

1. Wash your hands frequently before and after handling raw or cooked food and its packaging, and avoid touching your mouth, eyes, and nose with unclean hands. Wash food carefully before processing it, and be careful to prevent splashing when washing. Clean and disinfect countertops and kitchen utensils in a timely manner after cooking.

2. When preparing food at home, pay attention to separating raw and cooked food. Utensils for processing and holding raw meat, aquatic products and vegetables should be separated from cooked food, and they should be cleaned and disinfected promptly after use. Special attention should be paid when handling livestock and poultry meat and aquatic products, and they should also be kept separately when stored in the refrigerator.

3. Home-cooked dishes should be cooked thoroughly. Prepared food should be consumed as soon as possible and should not be left at room temperature for more than 2 hours. Food that cannot be eaten immediately should be refrigerated or frozen. Leftover food should be refrigerated in time, and leftover food and overnight food should be thoroughly heated before consumption. Eat less or no raw seafood.

3. During the Qingming Festival, the weather in some areas is humid and rainy. Be especially vigilant against fermented rice and flour food poisoning. When preparing fermented rice and flour foods at home, change the water frequently, keep it hygienic, and ensure that the food has no odor. Once pink, green, yellow-green, black and other mold spots are found, they cannot be eaten. After grinding, it should be dried in the sun or dried into powder in time, and the storage should be ventilated, moisture-proof and dust-proof. The best preventive measure is not to make, sell or eat fermented rice and flour foods such as sour soup, hanging rice cakes, and wet rice noodles.

4. Be cautious when eating wild vegetables. When buying wild vegetables, you should buy them from regular merchants, choose wild vegetables that are grown locally and have been eaten for many years, and be cautious when buying rare varieties. When picking wild vegetables, be careful to avoid environmentally polluted areas (such as sewage discharge sites, roads, landfills, etc.) and avoid picking unfamiliar varieties.

5. Beware of poisonous mushroom poisoning and do not eat wild mushrooms. There is currently no simple, easy and accurate method to identify poisonous mushrooms. Some methods and experiences of identifying poisonous mushrooms circulated among the people are not reliable. The best way to avoid poisonous mushroom poisoning is not to eat wild mushrooms.

6. Eat a balanced diet and avoid waste. Eat a balanced diet, pay attention to food diversity, eat more fruits and vegetables, milk, soybeans and whole grains, and eat fish, poultry, eggs and lean meat in moderation. Pay attention to less salt and oil in daily diet, control sugar and limit alcohol. Advocate the use of public chopsticks and spoons to avoid waste.