Get advice about keeping food cool and safe during the summer, with free advice leaflets to download.
Sunbathers are not the only ones who enjoy rising temperatures. Food poisoning bugs also like it hot.
Enjoying Food Outdoors
A hot, sunny day should be an enjoyable day out for the family, with the prospect of a picnic or barbecue, but if people are not careful, the day could be spoilt by food poisoning.
Food bug numbers can soar in the heat, so you need to keep food cool when eating outside.
Food poisoning cases surge during the summer months. Just ten invisible bugs in your food can multiply to 1,000 in six hours, 100,000 in less than ten hours and to more than a million in 12 hours. And when it is very hot, bugs can multiply even faster.
Top Tips to Keep Food Cool and Safe
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Avoid delays in getting shopping home – if possible, use a cool bag
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If you are taking food for a picnic or day out, put it in a cool bag with some ice bricks or frozen cartons of fruit juice, to help keep it cool.
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Keep the food in the cool bag until you are ready to eat it
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Always keep stored food covered and out of the sun
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Make sure that raw foods such as meat are kept separately from ready-to-eat foods
For more advice download the Bugs Like It Hot leaflet below, produced by the Food Standards Agency as part of a media publicity campaign for National Food Safety Week.
