Food Friday: Healthy Barbecue, Grilling, and Picnics.

Everybody loves to play with fire, especially people who like good food and who don't want to be stuck in a hot kitchen in the summertime. 

Check out this comprehensive list of tips for barbecue, grilling and picnics and you will be the smartest flamethrower on the block. 

Grilling: 

• 7000 people each year suffer grilling injuries. 
• Read your grill's owner's manual. 
• Use propane and charcoal grills outside only.
• Use in a well ventilated area, away from combustible material and at least ten feet from a structure. 
• Ensure the grill is stable. 
• Do not move a hot grill. 
• Have long handled cooking utensils.
• Have fire extinguisher, baking soda, a bucket of sand, or water handy. 
• For propane grills, check fittings to make sure they're tight. Check propane hose for gas leaks by applying soapy water and checking for bubbles. 
• Never turn on a gas grill with the lid closed or you will risk explosion ! 
• For charcoal grills, use a chimney or electric starter. Never add lighter fluid to a flame. 
• Dispose of cool coals in a metal container. 
• Keep younger children away from the grill. 
• Never leave a grill unattended. 

Food Handling: 

• Buy cold foods like meat and poultry last, when you are about to head for home. Bag them so liquids cannot contaminate other foods that will not be cooked. 
• Wash hands with soap before handling food, and keep surfaces and utensils clean. 
• Thaw in the refrigerator or the microwave NOT the counter. 
• Keep raw food separate from cooked food. 
• Marinate in the fridge, not on the counter. Poultry and cubed meat may marinate only 2d, other types 5 days. 
• Trim fat to minimize hazardous flares and unhealthy charring. 
• Consider precooking to shorten grilling times. 
• Consider buying a food thermometer. They're inexpensive. 
• Cook food thoroughly. 

Poultry 165 degrees

Ground red meat 160 degrees

Beef pork lamb and veal 145 degrees, and allow to rest three minutes. 

Reheat cooked meat like hot dogs to 165 degrees. 

• Keep cold food cold and hot food hot. 
• Don't let cooked foods sit out more than an hour if the temperature is greater than 90 degrees. 
• Discard food left out more than 2 hours. 

Healthy Grilling recipes: 

Cooking Light 

Food Network

Eating Well

Fitness Magazine

Food and Wine 

Health

ENJOY ! 

References:

FDA Barbecue Basics

UDSA on food safety

National Fire Protection Safety Association 

MEDICAL MONDAY: The medical facts behind helmets and skiing.

This article is written in honor of my brave niece who is recovering from a ski accident. 

She is very athletic and very experienced. She is not reckless, and was wearing a helmet. Nonetheless, she caught an edge, lost a ski,  flew out of bounds, hit a tree, lost consciousness and went down a tree well. Luckily, a patrol just happened to be skiing right behind her and dashed down after her. She and my sister in law, who nearly passed by the single ski on the trail, hauled her out, and our awesome Alert Helicopter evacuated her. Her helmet suffered a big gash. She got a concussion and some hairline spine fractures. People keep saying she is so lucky that that she was wearing a helmet. 

It wasn't luck. The data and recommendations are crystal clear and their family follows them. I have summarized them here for you. They come from a review article which was published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery in April of 2014. This review combined the findings of 16 prior well designed studies which examined the effects of helmet wearing on both skiers and boarders. Here are some of their key findings: 

• Injuries in boarders are more numerous and more serious.
• Incidence of injuries are higher in males, and those under 17 years of age. 
• A 1996 study showed the average inpatient cost of a skiing or boarding injury to be $22,000.
• There are 600,000 ski and snow boarding related injuries per year in North America.
• About a fifth of these are head injuries.
• About a fifth of these head injuries are severe enough to cause loss of consciousness of concussion.
• That's about 24,000 people per year losing consciousness or having a concussion with their head injury.
• The 16 studies collectively showed anywhere between a 30%-60 % reduced incidence of head injury while wearing a helmet. 
• They also showed decreased incidence of loss of consciousness upon striking a fixed object while wearing a helmet. 
• Wearing a helmet is not associated with increased rates of other injuries, poorer responses to stimuli, or riskier behaviors. 

The authors concluded that helmets should be strongly recommended and that policies should be put into place to promote their usage. 

My niece is going to be fine. But she has a few challenging weeks ahead of her. She will miss her finals, miss her sports, and end up with lots of physical therapy and doctor visits instead. We are just grateful she is with us and, and still moving and smiling.