How to stay safe when eating at a public restaurant

Posted by Felix Okoli on Tuesday May 27, 2014 at 12:21:48:

Due to our very busy schedules or limited time factor, many of us are guilty of patronizing the services of public restaurants to satisfy our daily feeding needs. These public restaurants offer already prepaid dishes; all you need do is visit one around you with cash.

Inasmuch as these public restaurants do their best ensure that they serve their customers the best meal that at a very fast rate, customers should maintain some precautions while eating in restaurants to ensure their own safety.

Some safety tips to ensure that you stay safe when eating in a public restaurant includes:

1. Check for a Clean Environment: As much as you as a customer does not have access to their kitchen to ensure that it is clean and safe, but you can take a look at the general environment of the restaurant to ensure that it is neat, and free from dirt. This will give you an idea of how the kitchen is, if the saving area is dirty, the chances of the kitchen being dirty is high.

2. Eat only hot food: Ensure that the food you are served is hot and has a fresh taste. Heat kills bacteria and micro-organisms. You should ensure that the food served to you is hot so that you don't get sick after eating it. This is an indication that the food was prepared not long ago and still fresh. Don't just consider if a part of the food is hot but the whole food including things like meat, fish and eggs should be hot.

3. Go for freshly prepared foods: It is much better to eat food that has been freshly prepared than eating old food. If you can, go to restaurants that serve food that has just been prepared. It will keep you healthy.

4. Be ready to spend more: At times, the reason why people get sick from foods eaten at public restaurants is because they are not ready to spend money. The truth is that you could protect your health by going to high class restaurants than low class ones where proper food hygiene is lower. It may require you to spend more but if you can, you should, just to preserve your good health.

5. Eat packaged food: If the restaurant you are visiting sells packaged food and drinks, it's better to go for those than for the ones that come open. Packaged foods are less likely to make you sick.