As the Lunar New Year holiday approaches, the treasured ‘special touch’ when carefully marinating meat could end up sending the whole family to the emergency room. This is because the moment you casually grab vegetables or fruit with hands that have handled raw meat, invisible foodborne pathogens can transfer, causing ‘cross-contamination’.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety provided proper grocery shopping and food preparation guidelines to prevent such easily occurring food poisoning incidents ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday.

First, holiday grocery shopping is a ‘race against time’. To keep ingredients fresh, try to finish shopping within 1 hour. Upon entering the store, place shelf-stable processed foods or produce in your cart first, and add perishable refrigerated foods, meat, and seafood just before checkout. When ordering online, carefully check the delivery time so that delivered ingredients are not left at your door for long.

When storing purchased ingredients, ‘separate storage’ to prevent cross-contamination is essential. Eggs, raw meat, and fish must be kept separate so they do not come into direct contact with vegetables and fruits that are eaten without cooking. Ingredients to be used immediately should be stored in the refrigerator door, while those for later use are more efficiently kept deeper inside the refrigerator or in the freezer.

In the main cooking process, ‘handwashing’ and ‘separating tools’ are key. To prevent cross-contamination by foodborne pathogens, do not immediately process vegetables or other ingredients with hands that have touched eggs or raw meat. You must wash your hands with soap or another cleanser before moving to the next step. Knives and cutting boards should likewise be designated separately for produce and for meat; if you have only one tool, clean it thoroughly with detergent each time the ingredient changes.

When making food, pay attention to ‘thawing’ and ‘heating’. If frozen foods are left for a long time in warm water or submerged in water, foodborne bacteria can multiply, so it is safest to cook immediately after thawing. When heating, it is important to cook thoroughly to the center. Ground meats such as meatballs should be cooked completely through, and processed meats such as ham and sausages should be heated to a core temperature (the deepest internal temperature of the food) of 75 degrees for at least 1 minute. Shellfish such as oysters and clams present concerns such as norovirus, so they should be cooked thoroughly to a core temperature of 85 degrees for at least 1 minute before eating.

Even when preparing home meal replacements (HMR) or meal kits, whose consumption has recently increased, carefully check the storage method and use-by date indicated on the packaging, and be sure to heat thoroughly before eating.

Oh Yu-kyoung, head of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, said, “Because holiday foods are prepared in large quantities, you need to take care from purchasing and storage through cooking in order to prevent food poisoning,” adding, “When traveling back home or otherwise in transit, keep food in a cooler bag, and be sure to reheat it before eating.”