Healthy Habits: Germiest Hotspots in Your Kitchen

Although many of us are taking all the necessary precautions and recommendations to keep ourselves and our families safe as we navigate through COVID-19, it’s important to be alert to other illnesses that can also pose a risk to our health. For instance, recent studies have shown that the number of foodborne outbreaks keeps rising each year. Nasty pathogens like E.coli, salmonella, and listeria have been increasingly found in produce and animal products.

For some shocking news, a recent food cleanliness survey also found that nearly 20 percent of people still don’t regularly wash their produce before eating and that nearly one in four Americans wash their refrigerator vegetable drawers every six months to a year! Because of a refrigerator’s low temperatures, access to nutrients, high moisture, and zero UV rays, pathogens thrive and therefore multiply quickly. If you’re not sanitizing your drawers every one to two week, they can actually end up being up to 45 times dirtier than a public toilet seat.

To help you keep your kitchen and produce clean, I thought I’d share the infographic below. It summarizes the rest of the findings from this shocking survey, places to watch out for and clean in your kitchen, and the best way to properly wash fruits and vegetables according to the FDA.

Please include attribution to kitchencabinetkings.com with this graphic.