How not to stumble upon spoiled food in stores during power outages: ways to check for spoilage

Frequent and prolonged power outages have led to significant problems. One of these is the quality of food. We do not know under what conditions certain foods were stored without refrigeration in the store. Or they may have spoiled already at home.

Therefore, in order that you can rationally calculate the stock of your food and understand their quality, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine has prepared a brief instruction.

What products to stock up on

Take care of nutritious, long term storage food. If necessary, it can be taken with you to shelter. Preferably, these foods do not require much water to cook.

• freeze-dried foods (porridge, soups, noodles)
• canned meat
• fish
• Vegetable breads and cookies
• nuts, chocolate, dried fruit

Also think about what foods you and your family eat. Make a three-day supply of food for your home.

Even if there is no electricity, keep food in the refrigerator: it will stay cold for a few hours after the power goes out. Try to open the door as little as possible. Eat foods that spoil quickly first.

If it is cold outside, food can be kept outside.

With fan and emergency power outages, there is an increased risk of buying spoiled food that has been stored improperly - without following the prescribed refrigeration temperature.

If your neighborhood has scheduled power outages, when selecting a store, you should check the store's address in the outage schedule on the suppliers' websites. The best option is a store whose building is located on the same line as critical infrastructure, where outages either do not occur or are less frequent than on other lines. In such cases, there is a lower risk of encountering products whose storage conditions have been compromised due to the disconnection of refrigerators and freezers from the network.

If there are no stores nearby that do not turn off the lights, find one where the owners have installed a generator.

Buy first those food products that are made recently and have at least been stored in commercial establishments.

Try to buy food products from establishments that have more turnover (more customers) and therefore more frequent delivery schedules from perishable food manufacturers.

Pay attention to the refrigerator load of food products. Overloaded refrigeration equipment, where there is no air circulation, is not able to maintain temperature for a long time after de-energizing.

Avoid buying products from the list of products that spoil first in the absence of electricity.

Always pay attention to the date of packaging, the final date for consumption and storage conditions (compare whether the recommended label matches the conditions under which the products are stored in the store).

Avoid "half-price" products that have already expired. In today's realities, the risk that a product has already spoiled is higher.

Which foods spoil first and what alternatives are available

• Chilled meat.

If you doubt its quality, give preference to frozen meat. However, provided it has not had time to defrost and has no signs of spoilage.

• Ready-to-eat food.

It is undesirable to store it without refrigeration for more than 2 hours.

• Cooked sausages (sausages, wieners, cooked sausage).

Alternatively, choose smoked sausage or raw, vacuum-packed sausage.

• Weighty fermented cottage cheese.

Prefer vacuum-packed cheese.

• Dairy products.

Instead of milk in bottles with a short shelf life, opt for milk in tetrapaks, which can be stored without refrigeration.

• Fish and fish products.
• Confectionery (pastries, cakes, mousses).

Instead, choose candies, bars, cookies, which do not require special conditions for storage. How to realize that the product has begun to spoil:

• Fish is fresh

Fish has dense and elastic scales, fins are moist and soft, gills are pink or scarlet and free of mucus, and eyes are clear and convex. Fresh fish meat is firm, moist, juicy and has a healthy sheen. To check, press your finger: if the meat does not restore its former shape for a long time - in front of you spoiled fish. However, of the signs that the fish has begun to spoil, the smell of ammonia.

• Meat

Fresh chicken always has a uniform color: pale or light pink. There should be no extraneous odors from the product. The skin of the bird can be exclusively white or yellow in color. If the chicken is sticky, smells bad (chemical or has a sour odor), is too pale or has spots on it, it has begun to spoil.

Fresh beef is red or dark red in color, with veins and a neutral odor. When pressed on the surface of the meat will quickly return to the previous shape. Grayishness, yellowing and spots are signs that beef is spoiling.

Fresh pork is pale pink in color. Darkening on the edges of a piece of meat or non-uniform color can indicate that the meat is weathered.