The Facts on Grocery Shopping and Preparing Food During COVID-19
Current Scientific Evidence on COVID-19
Research states that COVID-19 is not a food born illness and nor has there been any documented cases that were infected with COVID-19 through food. Nevertheless, a research article from New England Journal of medicine concluded that COVID-19 can stay active on high risk surfaces.
Some of the high risk surfaces they suggest are:
- plastic and steel: virus lasts 3 days
- cardboard: virus lasts 24 hours
- copper: virus lasts 4 hours
Based off this information there still is a risk of catching COVID-19 by touching contaminated surfaces, such as food packaging, and then touching one’s face without proper hand hygiene. Now luckily for us this is not a common way that virus may be transmitted. This means that getting and handling food and food packages are low-risk! But using precautions to reduce the risk should still be practiced while grocery shopping.
Some easy things to do to reduce the risk are:
- keep disinfecting wipes with you to wipe down shopping carts or baskets.
- Keep 2 metres apart or follow directional arrows in the grocery store
- Choose the self-checkout the minimize handling of your grocery bags
- Opt out of receipts
- Practice good hand hygiene and use hand sanitizer (needs 60% alcohol) immediately when you leave the store
- When you get home wash your hands with soap and water
- Wash bags when you get home
- If possible, set aside non-perishables for 72 hours before using them or use disinfecting wipes to wipe down food packages.
Two Easy ways to disinfect packages
You can use one of these two solutions on your food packages and it will kill the virus
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Bleach 5 Tbsp ( 1/3 cup) bleach per gallon of water Or 4 Tsp bleach per quart of water |
Alcohol solutions
Solution needs to be at least 70% alcohol |
Food Safety is always a must…
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Food Safety should always be a priority!
The main important things that you should be aware of with food safety are to:
There are more food safety habits and tips to get into… but that’s a whole other topic. If you are interested l earn more at: https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/general-food-safety-tips... |
Go to CDC to get more information on hand washing!
https://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/when-how-handwashing.html
On another note on washing Fresh Produce
Lately, there has been a trend to wash fresh produce with dish soap. Please DO NOT wash fresh produce in soapy water…. Running water is enough to clean the produce and following food safety guidelines
Overall, you are unlikely or minimizing the risk of catching COVID-19 while grocery shopping if you follow safe shopping tips, hand hygiene, food safety and sanitation.