In today’s economy, many of us are looking to do more with less – and many of us are eating out less often, making meals at home and making the most of leftovers. Home cooking can be healthier as well as more economically sound – but only if you play it safe. Here’s a guide to using food safely, storing it effectively and knowing when to say goodbye.

There are 76 million annual cases of foodbourne illness, 325,000 people hospitalized with foodbourne illnesses, and 5,000 deaths from foodbourne illness. Thus, knowing basic food storage and preparation safety truly is a matter of life and death. How can you keep your food fresh and healthy?

Practice safer shopping

For safer eating, the FDA advises you to start at the store:

* Don’t buy food in bulging or dented cans or jars with the safety seal on top already popped.
* Look around the store. Do employees use safe food handling practices? Does the store look and smell clean?
* Check expiration dates and check eggs to make sure none are cracked.
* Put frozen foods, meats, poultry, fish and eggs in the shopping cart last.
* Refrigerate perishables within two hours of purchasing them – if they sit out any longer the food may be warm enough for harmful bacteria to multiply.

Smarter storage strategies

Although you should make sure that your fridge is at 40 degrees or below (use an appliance thermometer to check), not all areas of your fridge are the same. Milk can go bad and lettuce can freeze to a useless icy mess all in the same fridge. It’s all about knowing what to store where:

* Fridge door: Ideal for condiments, salsa, salad dressings and tomato sauce – not milk, cheese or cold cuts.
* Freezer door: Flour, nuts, frozen fruits and vegetables.
* Crisper drawers in fridge: Good for vegetables and fruits that need refrigeration such as apples and bell peppers.
* Top shelf of fridge: Best for prepared foods and salads, cooked meat and poultry (which you should use or toss within three days).
* Cheese drawer: Best for cheeses because it is more humid and a little warmer than the rest of the fridge since the cold air doesn’t circulate through it.

For a few years now soya and soya based products have become very popular. Many people who are vegetarian use soya as a replacement for meat, and people who are lactose intolerant drink soya milk as a substitute for cow’s milk. soya has been so deeply ingrained into our way of life, but is it really good for us? Recent reports seem to say that soya is not.

Not too long ago, several centuries, soya was not considered as a food source, and it is amazing how modern propaganda could push this product into the spotlight. It wasn’t until the 2nd Century in China’s Chou Dynasty that the fermentation of soya made it a viable option for human consumption. Up until that point it had been mainly used in crop rotation to moderate the nitrogen levels in the soil. The unfermented soyabeans were never eaten, as they contained large levels of natural toxins that blocked digestion. Many of these toxins cannot be removed, even through cooking. Soya has been shown to produce serious gastric distress and reduce the proteins needed for proper digestion and can also cause cancer.

A closer examination of soya shows that the product is 99% genetically altered. There are also more pesticides in soya than in any other food product in the world today. There have been further studies that show vegetarians who regularly consume soya products run a risk of severe deficiencies in calcium, magnesium and iron. Producers of soya are still trying to figure out how to get these “anti nutrients” out of soya and make it more “user friendly”. One process involves mixing the soya with an alkaline solution to remove the fiber. The process takes place in large aluminum tanks where the aluminum has a chance to seep into the soya as well. After this process, the curds are spray-dried under high temperatures to produce textured vegetable protein (TVP).

Although numerous studies have shown soya to have caused poor results in animals who were fed the product, the soya industry has not let up in its push to market it to the public. School lunches, commercial baked goods and fast food all have soya in them and are consumed in large quantities every day. You have to know that something is seriously wrong when in 1913, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) listed soya as an industrial product and not as food. There was a time when soya wasn’t selling quite as much as the soya industry would have hoped, so they changed their marketing tactics. Instead of targeting people who might live in impoverished areas, they shifted their sights to the mainstream and the people with money. soya became the next fad in a long line of ‘miracle foods’ and the public literally ate it up. Apparently, this is working and it is scary.