Final answer:
Properly storing food in the refrigerator in the correct order, from ready-to-eat foods at the top to poultry at the bottom, prevents cross-contamination and reduces the risk of foodborne illnesses. This is accompanied by other practices such as proper hand hygiene, maintaining correct refrigerator temperature, rotating pantry food, and cooking foods thoroughly.
Step-by-step explanation:
The subject of the question is about refrigeration and food safety, specifically how to store foods in a refrigerator to prevent foodborne illness.
According to food safety guidelines, foods should be stored in the refrigerator in a specific order to minimize the risk of cross-contamination, with ready-to-eat items and those requiring less cooking at the top, and items requiring the most cooking and potential contamination at the bottom. Here is the order from top to bottom:
- Ready-to-eat foods
- Seafood
- Whole cuts of beef and pork
- Ground meat and ground fish
- Whole and ground poultry
This storage order helps ensure that fluids from foods that have higher cooking temperature requirements do not drip onto foods that are either ready to eat or have lower cooking temperature requirements, thereby reducing the chances of bacteria transfer and foodborne diseases.
Other food safety practices include keeping the refrigerator temperature at or below 4 degrees C (40 degrees F) and the freezer temperature below -18 degrees C (0 degrees F), washing hands, rotating pantry food, rinsing fresh produce, and cooking foods to the necessary internal temperatures.