By Cat Holmes
University of Georgia
When an outbreak of foodborne illness strikes, such as the
recent one involving the Golden Corral restaurant in Kennesaw,
Ga., people pay more attention to restaurant hygiene.
Restaurant employees have to practice hand-washing, good
personal hygiene and proper sanitation, says Judy Harrison, a
food safety expert with the University of Georgia College of
Consumer and Food Sciences.
But people eating at restaurants can follow some guidelines to
reduce their risk, she said.
Check the scores
“It pays to look at sanitation scores,” Harrison said. “If I go
to a restaurant and the score is lower than 80, I turn around
and hightail it out of there.”
Every county in the state conducts routine inspections of all
of the food service establishments. A restaurant is given 100
points at the beginning of the inspection, and for each health
code violation, points are deducted.
“A lower score means more cause for concern,” Harrison
said. “It pays to see what they actually are scoring low on.
Don’t just look at the numbers. You have that right to examine
it up close and personal. If you see things that are immediate
hazards, you might want to choose a different restaurant.”
The bathroom theory
Another rule of thumb Harrison uses is the bathroom-kitchen
theory.
“When you go in, look for a clean restaurant and clean
bathrooms,” Harrison said. “If the bathrooms are clean, that’s
a pretty good indication that the kitchen is probably clean,
too. And if the bathrooms in a restaurant are filthy, then
chances are the kitchen is not a lot better. It implies that
they don’t care enough about good sanitation and
cleanliness.”
The bottom line, Harrison said, is that good hygiene and clean
facilities are up to the restaurant employees, managers and
owners.
“It needs to be a situation where the restaurant trains its
employees to practice good food safety practices like hand
washing, keeping work areas and work surfaces clean and
handling food properly, and the manager follows up to make sure
it’s being done,” she said.
“No restaurant is going to be perfectly tidy during a mealtime
rush,” she said. “But if you look around and the place looks
grungy, it probably is grungy.”
There are other obvious signs to look out for.
“Certainly if you observe an employee not washing their hands
after going to the bathroom, tell the manager,” Harrison
said. “Consumers have the right to demand cleanliness and
expect it.”
Cooked food
Finally, the other way to avoid foodborne illness in
restaurants is to avoid undercooked food.
“When you have a choice of how meats are cooked, choose medium
or well done,” Harrison said. “If you’re served food that seems
obviously undercooked, send it back or ask to speak to the
manager.”
(Cat Holmes is a news editor with the University of Georgia
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)
