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Eat healthy; Cook your own meals
Hygiene matters: Health-conscious diners often question the hygiene aspect of foods sold by food hawkers
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Hygiene matters: Health-conscious diners often question the hygiene aspect of foods sold by food hawkers. (JP/Arief Suhardiman)
At work, people tend to buy their lunch for practical reasons. They don’t have to go to all the trouble of preparing a meal in the early hours like they would have to if they took a lunchbox from home.
The practicality can outweigh the downside. For example, buying a meal means spending more money. Besides, you can never be sure about the hygiene aspect. As we all know, lower-class eateries have low hygiene standards and their compliance to relevant regulations is low, if not nonexistent.
The United Nations notes that over the past few decades, the majority of the world population has dramatically changed their eating habits in line with globalization, urbanization and increased incomes. They have too little time to prepare meals at home.
Especially in cities, people increasingly rely on supermarkets, fast food restaurants and roadside food stalls for their meals. The Health Ministry has reported that street food has become the second-biggest cause of food poisoning.
The ministry recently joined hands with five UN bodies — the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Program (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) — and campaigned on healthy street food.
Soekresno, the author of a book on food and beverage management for tourism colleges, underlines the need for hygienic practices. Contamination and lack of cleanliness can lead to food poisoning and disease.
Contamination usually occurs not only in the food ingredients but also in the cooking. Sloppy cooks who handle the food can become the medium for the spread of germs and toxins.
While food stall appearance can be noted, it is not always known if the vendor has prepared the food in a hygienic way.
International food research by students of the Surabaya-based Petra Christian University published in the International Food Research Journal titled “The concern and awareness of consumers and food service operators towards food safety and food hygiene in small and medium restaurants in Surabaya, Indonesia” reveals that medium-sized vendors are more likely to maintain food hygiene in their restaurants.
On the other hand, small-scale vendors tend to neglect the hygiene aspect of food processing. This includes noncompliance to avoiding direct body contact (68 percent), utensils used in handling food (60 percent), personal hygiene (69 percent) and hygienic food handling (54 percent).
This explains why consuming food bought from small-scale vendors may increase the chances of getting food poisoning and other digestive-related health issues.
But again, practical considerations outweigh everything. Few tend to wake up early to prepare meals. Daily routine, limited time and a lack of creativity are probably to blame. Get the best ideas online.
Take a look at videos on Instagram and YouTube that demonstrate tricks on cooking breakfast or lunch. Buzzfeed.com, for example, runs daily recipe videos on its sub-media platform, Tasty.
In a video titled 6 Easy Meal Prep Ideas for the Week, the media shares lunch recipes for a four-day menu. Have a variety of salads, chicken breast with rice or potatoes once in a while.
Give the meals a nice presentation by adding many colors. Fruits and greens are great companions, contained in a colorful lunchbox that will keep you motivated when cooking or even looking forward to lunchtime at work.
The owner of kongkong2_kim Instagram account takes meal preparation up a notch with meticulous and clean end-results. While cooking, the owner also tries to make the food attractive, such as by shaping a serving of rice into the head of a cute frog, adding little beaks for boiled eggs or turning sausages into a swimming fish.
Store the prepared meals in the fridge and reheat them before going to work, freeing you from the troublesome extra chore at night or waking up extra early in the morning.
You may think that the cost will be nonetheless the same or even more than buying food from vendors near your office. However, these prepared meals are cooked by and for ourselves so we know their ingredients, quality and hygiene level.
Apart from the level of hygiene, who knows, maybe the way you package your lunch will inspire others to follow suit.
