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Hand washing is a very important practice of personal hygiene for preventing food poisoning and illnesses.
Improper hand washing technique may result in the spread of microorganisms from our hands to ready-to-eat food. Thus as a chef, one of our first lessons is to learn how to wash your hands.
How To Wash Your Hands?
Step 1: wet your hands with water
Step 2: sufficiently soap your hands
Step 3: scrub your palms together
Step 4: scrub in between your fingers
Step 5: scrub the back of your fingers
Step 6: scrub your thumb
Step 7: scrub your finger nails
Step 8: scrub your wrists
Step 9: thoroughly rinse off the soap with water
Step 10: dry your hands with paper towel
Improper hand washing techniques usually only involve the scrubbing of our palms and back of our hands. This will result in the spread of microorganism from our nails, in between our fingers, our thumbs and wrists to the food we handle. Also, always use soap to wash our hands as soap helps to remove microorganisms from our hands.
Tips: to reduce the chances of cross contamination, it is advised to wash or hands thoroughly in water at least 43 degree celsius for more than 20 seconds.
When To Wash Your Hands?
Before wearing any gloves
Before engaging in food preparation
When switching between raw and cooked foods
After touching bare human parts
After using the restroom
After engaging in other activities that contaminate hands eg. coughing, sneezing
Reasoning behind hand washing*important*:
Harmful microbes such as S. Aureus and E. Coli can be found on our hands and contaminate the food we handle through physical contact. As a preventive measure, regular washing of hands with the right technique will maintain the amount of harmful microbes on our hands low.
With the proper hand washing technique, cross contamination can be greatly reduced, our customers can safely enjoy the food we prepared.
Thank you Mandy for your comment, I will take note of identifying a few negative examples. Bad examples of hand washing are that people usually wash their hands without soaps and they only focus on washing their palms and back of hand, often neglecting in between fingers and the fingernails. these neglected areas area parts of our hands that accumulate most harmful microbes due to us not paying attention to wash them properly.
I agree with washing our hands the correct way with adequate washing facilities, however, what are some way to educate the workers or chefs the correct way and methods to wash their hands to keep their hands clean for food preparation in the kitchen? Besides, you can provide some bad examples of hand washing that could be the problem now in the F&B industries.