Final answer:
Criteria for receiving RTE food involve food safety and nutritional adequacy, ensuring items like pasta, rice, and vegetables meet dietary requirements and are free from contaminants that could cause illness.
Step-by-step explanation:
The criteria for receiving RTE (Ready-to-Eat) food typically involve ensuring food safety and nutritional adequacy. RTE foods include items such as pasta, rice, fresh vegetables, cooked vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, milk or other beverages, salad dressing, oil, flour, breads, cereals, rice, macaroni, margarine, salt, milk, fruit beverages, energy bars, instant breakfast drinks, which must be of a sufficient quantity and quality to meet dietary needs and food preferences. It's important to consider potential health risks with consumption of certain RTE food items. For instance, the ingestion of contaminated rice or meat, even after cooking, ingestion of unpasteurized milk, under-cooked chicken, or contaminated water can be associated with foodborne illnesses. Studies such as those by Johnson et al. on the acceptance of electron-beam irradiated poultry meats suggest methods for enhancing food safety. Ensuring RTE food is safe involves practices like proper cooking, food handling, and sometimes food processing techniques like irradiation or proper storage.