[Updated May 10, 2018]
About 1 in 6 Americans suffer a foodborne illness each year, often in their own homes, so safe food handling practices can’t be overemphasized. Recently, scientists watched 100 episodes of cooking shows from 24 celebrity chefs preparing meat dishes and tracked the chefs’ food safety behaviors. This revealed that 88% did not wash (or weren’t shown washing) their hands after handling raw meat, and 79% used their presumably unwashed hands (after handling raw meat) to add ingredients that wouldn’t be cooked further, among several other food safety faux pas. “Celebrity chefs are great for entertaining us, but they are not good at modeling appropriate food safety behaviors,” says Edgar Chambers IV, PhD, a coauthor of the study published online in the Journal of Public Health. Learn more about food safety at Fight Bac!.
To learn more: Journal of Public Health, online April 2016