Environmental Health Officers from the council visited the Age Concern centre in Eastbourne to play Beat the Bingo Bug!
It is a fun food hygiene game, produced for national Food Safety Week in June 2009.
The emphasis for Food Safety Week 2009 is food safety at home for older people, especially highlighting the risk from listeria, the main cause of food poisoning deaths in the UK.
Bingo with a Difference at Age Concern Eastbourne
About 18 older people joined in the bingo session at Age Concern and enjoyed learning about safe storage and handling of food at home in a fun way. In Beat the Bingo Bug, instead of the usual bingo numbers, food hygiene messages are read out, such as ‘Don’t miss that date’ and ‘Chill out’.
There are 100 food safety messages with the themes of choosing food, cooking, chilling, cleaning and preventing cross contamination, which are explained after each call. Players try to match them with those on their cards till they get five consecutive messages marked in a row and call BINGO!
The messages help stimulate questions and debate which all help to reinforce food safety advice. The game highlights the importance of sticking to ‘use by’ dates, following storage instructions on food labels and making sure the fridge is at the right temperature (between 0°C and 5°C).
Winners were given a free standing thermometer for their fridges and other participants information leaflets and fridge temperature indicators to take home.
Further Beat the Bingo Bug! games are planned with other local elderly groups in Eastbourne to help spread the food hygiene messages further.
Download Beat the Bingo Bug! Materials
You can download Beat the Bingo Bug! caller's cards, factsheet, instructions and player's cards from the Food Standards Agency website.
The game was originally produced by FSA Northern Ireland in partnership with district councils in Northern Ireland.
