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Listen to our latest episode!
Packing a Safe School Lunch
Hey y’all. I know that school has been back in session for 2-3 weeks and I am sure that you have finally gotten back into the routine of things. Even though all the schools in Van Buren County all kids eat school breakfast and lunch free, there are still a lot of moms out there having to pack your child a school lunch. I do not have kids but I am someone’s kid so I know one of the top priorities for you moms is packing a nutritious lunch that your child will actually eat. However, another major concern should be will your child’s school lunch be food safe by the time they get to lunch.
Depending on what time you or your child packs their lunch and what time it is ate determines how long it needs to stay out of the Temperature Danger Zone (TDZ; 40-140 degrees Fahrenheit). The food might need to keep cool, or hot, for anywhere between 5-6 hours.
This month’s video shows three different ways I tried to keep a cold lunch cold and two ways I tried to keep a hot lunch hot.
I set the lunches aside and planned to check the temperature of the lunches every two hours until I reached six hours when the lunch might be ate. I didn’t put the lunches in the refrigerator because not a lot of teachers have a big enough fridge to store every child’s lunch.
After the first two hours, I used my thermometer to check each sandwich, soup, and cheese stick to test the temperature. Here are the results:
Bacteria loves to grow in the TDZ and can make your child very sick. While foods can be at the TDZ for around two hours and still be safe, by lunchtime, the food would have been in the TDZ for over three hours.
So how can you pack a safe lunch? After the complete fail of packing a safe lunch, I researched how to pack a food safe school lunch and here are my top tips for packing a food safe lunch.
I found these tips on the USDA website. Follow the links for more great tips to packing a food safe school lunch!