A registered and Licensed Dietician, Eyram King Dotse has advised Ghanaians to use two separate chopping boards for cutting meat and vegetables.
According to him, the raw meat and fish we buy from the market have bacteria in them which is very contagious.
He said “On the safer side, it is best to use two chopping boards, one for vegetables and the another for meat or fish. In fact, that is one of the most common point at which food poisoning happens. The meat most of us buy are not wholesome. They have to an extent the degree of contamination. And one thing is, no matter the meat you are using, there is an amount of contamination in it. And then, because it’s raw so the process which is cooking, turns to kill the bacteria.
But then as is it raw and you are cutting it, and you are still using that same chopping board for your vegetables, there is that likelihood of having cross-contamination and then the vegetables become poisoned. Yes so ideally, it’s best to use two chopping boards. One for the meat and fish and another for the vegetables”.
Speaking on the GTV Breakfast Show, the Dietician stated that food can be contaminated by how we process, cook, and preserve them.
“The food is supposed to be wholesome so that it doesn’t affect us. But then once it is contaminated, I mean the food is poisoned. So the poisoning of the food will come about by the way we handle the food right from the raw materials used to prepare the food even up to where the food is stored and then maybe reheated or cool down to eat yes. So all these processes lead to the food poisoning. If you are preparing for example salad, how you cut the salad, how you process can lead to food poisoning,” he added.
He, however, mentioned that some equipment used for preparing food can contaminate them.
“I mean the equipment which are being used to prepare the soup. A dirty knife, a chopping board which is dirty”, he stated.