Food/Cooking Safety

Food Safety

Types of Food

You may think that there is just one type of food. You may even think that there are no categories for food you bring. You would be wrong. There are five types of food you could bring to a campout. They include:

1) Fresh Food

2) Nonperishable Food

3) Dried/Dehydrated Food

4) Canned Food

5) Convenience Food

Fresh Food

What is fresh food? Most of the time, Fresh Foods will have the most flavor and are very nutritious. But, they can be easily damaged and are prone to spoiling.

Nonperishable Food

What is nonperishable food? Nonperishable foods are mostly ideal for longer trips because they take a longer time to spoil. Most nonperishable foods would be grains or flours.

^{Dried/Dehydrated Food}

What is dried/dehydrated food? Much of the weight of most foods is water. When water is taken out of foods, most foods will weigh less. Bringing these foods on hikes or campouts are recommended as snacks because they weigh a small amount and they take a very long time to spoil.

Canned Food

What is canned food? Canned foods should be pretty self explanatory. Canned foods could consist of preserved foods to fruits. Although they are pretty heavy, they could be very useful if you are planning on making deserts or other foods.

Convenience Foods

What is convenience food? Convenience foods are mostly foods that you could buy from the grocery store that are ready to eat or quick to prepare. This would include pasta sauce mixes, pancake mixes, or energy bars.

MyPlate

Although most of you have already heard of MyPlate, some people might not know. MyPlate is a diagram that shows the relative amounts of each type of food you should eat each day. When making menus, try to follow the MyPlate diagram and keep it in mind.

Storing Food

_{Storing Food at Home}

When putting foods in the refrigerator in your home, keep in mind the different foods you have.

*Raw Meats: Bottom Shelf*

Dairy: Top Shelf

Produce: Middle Shelves

Raw Meats

You may ask why raw meats should be on the bottom shelf. If the raw meat were above, the liquids from the meat could drip down and contaminate the food. Once contaminated, the bacteria could multiply to dangerous levels if the food is not cooked again thoroughly.

_{Storing Food at Camp}

At camp, storing food is a little different. For our troop, we prefer to do things our way.

^{1) Keep heavier items on the bottom of the cooler and the lighter items on top.}

^{2) . *Instead of keeping your ice in the cooler, keep the ice in bags.*}

^{3) Keep all ingredients/food inside some sort of bag.}

^{Keeping Ice Separated}

On campouts, make sure to keep all of your ice in separate bags. There should be no water in your cooler. The reason why we keep ice in separate bags is because water would just make all the ingredients soggy. Also, if the water comes in contact with any raw meats or vegetables, all of the other ingredients you have could be contaminated.