Bringing good food on a trip makes for a more enjoyable and fun experience on the road. It also helps you eat healthily.
However, if you do not know how to keep your food safe while traveling, it can also be disastrous.
You might spend a lot of time planning the menu, shopping for ingredients, preparing the food, and packing your cooler. However, if you don’t know how to keep them safe, you’ll end up with ruined food after several hours.
Aside from being unappealing, ruined food can have severe health issues since germs survive in warmer conditions. You don’t want to experience stomach issues while on the road, right?
So, here are several tips you can follow to help keep your food safe while traveling.
Utilize Parchment Paper And Airtight Containers
Food poisoning is a severe problem. Thus, if you aren’t careful, it can easily ruin your road trip.
Because of this, you have to ensure that you keep food inside airtight bottles and containers. In addition to that, it’s also best to wrap them inside plastic wrap or parchment paper.
When it comes to containers, make sure you purchase high-quality ones from a reputable take away containers wholesale store.
Purchase Fresh Food
To get the most out of vegetables and fruits, make sure they’re fresh. Before you travel, make sure you purchase fresh vegetables and fruit from your local farmers’ market.
Fresh food from a farmers’ market can last a lot longer compared to the food you buy at a supermarket.
Also, if you plan to store them inside a vegetable storage bag, make sure you don’t wash them. These bags will not increase the lifespan of your fruits and vegetables unless you pack them dry.
Condensation, humidity, or dampness inside the bag will result in rot.
Create Your Own Ice Packs
You can cool drinks and food faster if you use crushed ice. However, ice blocks last longer. They’re ideal if you want to keep your cooler cold for a long period.
Creating your own ice containers for the cooler is an excellent way to keep food cold without wasting a lot of money on crushed ice.
One tip you can follow is to pre-freeze drinking water in a glass jar or bottle. These bottles should create ice big enough to cool your food for a long period.
Aside from that, once the ice melts inside the glass jar, you can drink the water.
To ensure that your glass jar is durable, you need to purchase it from reputable glass jar suppliers.
Choose The Right Cooler
Coolers come in a lot of price points, sizes, and shapes. As much as possible, choose a cooler that has a bottom drain. This enables you to get rid of water from the melted ice.
If you’ve got a midsize cooler with hinges on the top, it should have a durable latch to keep the lid tightly sealed to the body.
Also, an ideal cooler should have a lid gasket to produce an airtight seal that traps cool air inside.
If necessary, you can utilize two coolers when traveling. You can use the first cooler to store food that you’ll use less frequently.
On the other hand, you can use the other cooler to store food that you’ll frequently need. This includes beverages and drinks.
Clean Your Hands Regularly
The primary rule when it comes to food safety is to wash your hands properly. It does not matter where you are. You need to have clean hands when handling food.
Use water and soap to wash your hands before you eat and after you utilize the bathroom. Doing so will help you protect your loved ones from germs and bacteria.
Since water and soap might not always be available when you’re traveling, you can still keep your hands clean by packing some hand sanitizer and moist towels.
Plan Ahead
Before you begin packing food and snacks by, you’ve got to ensure you have a lot of frozen gel or ice packs on hand.
A couple of foods have to stay cold during your trip. On the other hand, some are safe at room temperature.
Keep in mind that a completely filled cooler keeps food colder longer compared to one that is filled partially.
Some foods that you have to chill include raw meat, perishable dairy products, cut-up vegetables and fruits, summer salads, and lunch meat sandwiches.
On the other hand, food that you don’t need to chill includes bread, crackers, candy, popcorn, nuts, pretzels, chips, whole fruit, and more.
If you’re bringing a lot of food that doesn’t need to be chilled, you can use a perfume box to store them. Simply make sure your perfume box is from a reputable perfume gift boxes wholesale store.
Conclusion
If you want your loved ones to stay safe when traveling, you should also consider the food that you’re planning to bring.
You don’t want your family to get sick on the road because of the food that you brought. Because of this, consider following the tips above for help.
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