Dining out: How to protect yourself

Everyone loves dining out. It might be for a special occasion, or it might just be a chance to get out of the house for an evening. In any case, it simply feels good to be waited on, and often you order something special, something you wouldn’t make for your family at home.

When choosing a restaurant, however, it’s important to select one that prioritizes food safety. Here are some tips from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on how to stay healthy when dining out:

Dining out:
Check inspection scores

You can look up a restaurant’s score at your local health department’s website. Ask the health department for a copy of the restaurant’s report, or look for the report once you arrive at the restaurant.

Dining out:
Check certificates

Look for health certificates that confirm that kitchen managers have completed training in food safety. Proper food-safety training can help improve practices that reduce the chance of spreading foodborne germs and illnesses.

Dining out:
Check kitchen staff

Keep an eye out for safe food-handling practices. Sick food workers can spread a foodborne illness to customers.

Most kitchens are out of the customer’s sight, but if you can see food being prepared, take a look to ensure that workers are using gloves or utensils to handle foods that will not be cooked further, such as deli meats and salad greens.

Dining out:
Beware of your order

Order food that’s properly cooked. Certain foods – including meat, poultry, and fish – need to be cooked to a temperature high enough to kill harmful germs that could be present.

If you are served undercooked meat, poultry, seafood, or eggs, send them back to be cooked until they are cooked properly and are then safe to eat.

Dining out:
Lukewarm? Don’t eat it

Avoid food that arrives at the table lukewarm. Cold food should be served cold, and hot food should be served hot.

If you are selecting food from a buffet or salad bar, make sure the hot food is steaming, and the cold food is chilled. Germs that cause food poisoning grow quickly when food is in the danger zone – that is, between 40 degrees and 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dining out:
Question your server

Ask your waiter or waitress if they use pasteurized eggs in foods such as Caesar salad dressing, custards, or hollandaise sauce. Raw and undercooked eggs can make you sick, unless they have been pasteurized to kill germs.

Dining out:
Treat leftovers right

Don’t let your leftovers sit out too long. Refrigerate leftovers within two hours of eating out, unless the outside temperature is above 90 degrees, in which case they should be refrigerated within one hour.

Make sure you consume those leftovers within four days. If that doesn’t happen, throw them out.

Dining out:
Food recall widget

Finally, it’s important to keep abreast of the news on foods that have been recalled. To aid with that, the CDC’s food safety website has a new tool that provides updated, at-a-glance information on food recalls from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Click within the widget for more information on each recall, including links to full recall notices on those two agencies’ websites. You can also scroll through the widget to see information on older recalls.

Dining out:
When all else fails

If you have become ill after dining out at a restaurant, don’t sign anything — talk to Elliot Olsen. He can tell you whether or not you can file a lawsuit, and he will know how to investigate the case. Finally, he can determine the amount of compensation you should seek.