Preparation Equipment

• Clean—Wash hands and surfaces often.

• Separate—Don't cross-contaminate.

• Cook—Cook to proper temperatures, checking with a food thermometer.

• Chill—Refrigerate promptly.

These five simple keys to safe and healthy food are: keep clean, separate raw and cooked, cook thoroughly, keep food at safe temperatures, and use safe water and raw materials. Following these five keys helps consumers know they are handling foods safely and preventing microbes from multiplying.

The three types of cooking methods are dry heat cooking, moist heat cooking, and combination cooking. Each of these methods uses heat to affect foods in a different way. All cooking techniques, from grilling to steaming, can be grouped under one of these three methods.

More than 50 percent of the waste occurs during “upstream,” or the production, yield handling, and storage phase, and the remaining happens during processing, distribution, and consumption stages or the “downstream” phase.

There are four types of hazards that you need to consider:

• Microbiological hazards. Microbiological hazards include bacteria, yeasts, moulds and viruses.

• Chemical hazards.

• Physical hazards.

• Allergens.

Here's our list of the top five most wasted foods and how to use them up.

• #1 Bread. Over 240 million slices of bread are chucked away every year.

• #2 Milk. Around 5.9 million glasses of milk are poured down the sink every year, but it's so easy to use it up.

• #3 Potatoes.

• #4 Cheese.

• #5 Apples.