BALTIMORE — We are counting down the days to the super bowl and many of us are gearing up for some friendly competition, cheerful performances, and of course food, but as many wait for a winning team, the United States Department of Agriculture wants to ensure people have a winning plan for handling food.
According to the CDC, each year food poisoning causes about 128,000 hospitalizations and estimate of 3,000 deaths, which is why the USDA wants people to follow four steps when preparing for the super bowl.
The steps include: clean, separate, cook and chill.
Clean involves washing the hands using soap and water for at least 20 seconds, then, sanitizing all surfaces that will be used to cook or prepare food.
Next step separate, this involves keeping raw meat away from any cooked food to avoid cross-contamination. This includes keeping them separately in the refrigerator and using different utensils when handling them.
After that is cook, a major step that the USDA says is very important when dealing with meats.
"The cooking step cook, simply means to make sure you're cooking your food to a safe internal temperature by using a food thermometer. So for example, chicken wings is probably the most popular food people eat during the Super Bowl. So you want to make sure if you're cooking chicken wings to use a food thermometer and insert it into the chicken wing to make sure they reach a safe internal temperature of 165 degrees," said Kenneth King, USDA Public Affairs Specialist.
The final step is chill, food should be put away no more than two hours after cooking and eating to prevent bacteria growth which can cause foodborne illnesses.
Once it's past the two hour mark, it enters what the USDA calls "the danger zone", The danger zone is when food sitting out at a temperature of 40 degrees to 140 degrees gets left out for two hours or this is when bacteria grows very quickly in the food.