The Buffet Did It

A few holiday seasons ago, a Fairfax County, Va., firm hosted an informal office party for its employees, providing deli platters of meats, cheeses and salads from a local restaurant. By the next day, many of the employees had severe stomach-flu-like symptoms, which they said was food poisoning.

The company’s first impulse was to blame the restaurant. But when state food inspectors were called in to investigate, they failed to turn up any violations at the deli.

Instead, they had a much more likely explanation: “The company had set out the platters for lunch and left them out past dinner time for people to eat all day long,” recalls Doug Saunders, program supervisor with the Virginia Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Food Inspections. Remaining that long at room temperature undoubtedly had caused the food to become contaminated with bacteria, Saunders says, thereby upsetting all those employees.

“Leaving food out too long is a common cause of food-borne illness,” agrees home economist Susan Conley of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Conley, who manages the Meat and Poultry Hotline for food-safety questions, says many people don’t understand that cooked food can still harbor bacteria. She and her staff urge people not to keep food at room temperature any longer than two hours. This is particularly critical advice during this season, when many of us have more people to feed and less time to cook, and when a buffet of prepared take-out food seems like the perfect solution.

Glen Rutherford, chief of environmental health for Arlington County, Va., says making sure that cold foods are kept cold enough (below 45 degrees) and hot foods are hot enough (above 140 degrees) is one of the primary things he and his inspectors check for when inspecting supermarket delis and take-out counters.

He stresses, however, that the perfectly fresh and safe salad that you buy at the supermarket can quickly deteriorate if: 1) it’s not refrigerated promptly once you get home, or 2) it’s left out several hours for guests, then refrigerated, then left out again.

“If food is set out for three hours today,” Saunders says, “you can’t refrigerate it and set it out again for three hours tomorrow. Refrigeration doesn’t kill bacteria; it only slows them down.”

Although health inspectors stress the importance of proper handling of food at home, they also offer tips for consumers shopping for take-out food:

* Buy prepared food as close as possible to the day you’re going to serve it, preferably no more than two days ahead of time.

* If you’re thinking of buying prepared salads from the supermarket, those in the refrigerated cases have less risk of contamination than self-service salad bars. “Not everyone uses a salad bar in the most hygienic manner,” Saunders notes. At the refrigerated take-out cases, only a store employee handles the food.

* Stores that sell the most take-out food probably have the freshest food, because nothing sits around that long.

* If you’re unsure how fresh the food is, ask when it was prepared or how long it has been in the case. If it was made somewhere else, it should have a “pull date” for employees to know when to toss it out, and they can tell you what that date is. If the employee can’t or won’t tell you these things, don’t buy the food.

* The temperature of a refrigerated case should be below 45 degrees. Check the thermometer or ask the deli manager to tell you the temperature.

“When you buy deli food,” advises Conley, “don’t stop and do a bunch of errands before going home. Get the food home and refrigerate it.”

If the turkey is bought hot, serve it within two hours or slice it up and cool it in the refrigerator. “It’s very critical to divide up a hot cooked whole turkey so it doesn’t spend a lot of time cooling down,” says Conley. It’s during that time that bacteria can grow.

Once your sliced turkey has been refrigerated, or if you’ve bought a cold, fully cooked turkey, she recommends carving it up before reheating, so that all pieces get thoroughly heated.

And, of course, don’t forget the cardinal rule of food safety, according to Saunders: If in doubt, throw it out. Or call the USDA’s Meat and Poultry Hotline at 1 (800) 535-4555 and ask if it should be thrown out.