Have you ever seen brown ground beef for sale in your grocery store? What about frost crystals in your frozen food items? Grocery stores have been known to handle food wrongly and it is important to identify food that may have a shorter life span due to the bad handling.
The deli and meat section of a grocery store can be a suspicious place. Many times ground beef may be brown or smelly, but still have an expiration date one week out. Be careful! If items look or smell funny, don’t buy them.
Many times in grocery stores, stock and frozen foods are unloaded and stocked at night. The time it takes to stock the frozen foods after they have been unloaded may be too long and many times we will find frozen foods with frost. It is likely that they might have been defrosted and then refrozen. In this case, you are likely to be cheated so avoid buying such food. It may harm your health and in turn make you spend more money buying medicines or paying hospital bills.
Try to buy fresh food from reputable stores. Whenever possible, check with other shops and compare quality. Go with the store where fresh foods are guaranteed. Check for the packing date and contents available on labels. Do not go for the appearance of a food item. Instead look and confirm its freshness. Avoid buying food items from open markets. These places often do not have proper hygienic conditions to ensure that fresh and raw food items are safe.
Learn how to tell if food items such as meat, fish and chicken are fresh instead of refrozen. Refrozen foods do not taste good and sometimes give foul odor. Check thermometer readings in display cabinets in the store’s frozen food section. The temperature in this area should read -18° C (0° F) or less. Avoid buying frozen food packages that are worn out, distorted, supple or covered with frost as these are signs that the food items may have thawed and been refrozen.
