6 Ways to Make Grocery Shopping More Sanitary

Like many public placing, the grocery store or supermarket is a breeding ground for bacteria. As a parent, you probably spend a good chunk of time shopping for food, so it’s important to make these trips as safe as possible. Here are some ways you can make food shopping more sanitary.

1. Wash your reusable bags

If you’re using your own bags (great job!), make sure to wash them in between trips to the store. The goal is to limit the transfer of bacteria, so you don’t want the germs from one shopping trip affecting another. You can simply through them in the wash.

2. Always check the dates

If you’re at a big store, you probably won’t come across expired food, but smaller, independent establishments might not have the best quality control. Always check the sell-by and use-by dates, especially on dairy products. If you don’t think you can use the item by the use-by date, find a later date or don’t buy the item.

3. Sanitize the shopping cart

Not only are those shopping carts handled by hundreds of people all day long, but they come in contact with the work gloves of store associates (who knows what else they touched) and they spend a good portion of their day outside, exposed to the elements. Most stores these days are offering sanitizing wipes at the entrance so make use of these.

4. Skip the free samples

Who doesn’t love free food? That’s what the stores are counting on, but those sample dishes can be potentially dangerous. Don’t take a sample if the food looks like it’s been sitting there for a while (regardless of how well you think it will keep). Also, don’t take food if there’s no staff member monitoring it or the food isn’t individually portioned (so customers are taking it with their hands).

5. Choose your produce carefully

Fresh fruits and vegetables that are stored in crates or bins are often handled by a lot of people. Choose pieces that are look unhandled and don’t have bruises (as bruises and tears are entryways for bacteria to get through the skin). Check for fuzzy substances on the fruit or vegetables that could indicate mold or insect exposure. When you get home, wash the items well to rinse away pesticides and toxins on the skin.

6. Make sure food is kept at the right temperature

If you’re purchasing prepared food, be sure that it’s been sitting in the right temperature environment. For example, sliced melons should be in a cool case or under a cool curtain of air, while cooked rotisserie chicken should be under a heat lamp.

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Written by Stephanie Parker from Sleepingbaby.com, inventor of the Zipadee-Zip

The motto for Sleeping Baby, makers of the Zipadee-Zip, is: "Inspiring Dreams One Night at A time," and that, in a nutshell, is how it all started…with one little dream that has since become the Parker family's reality. When Brett and Stephanie Parker's daughter, Charlotte, was born, the feeling that welled up inside of them was indescribable; they never realized until first looking into those baby blues of hers that they were even capable of that kind of love.

When it was time to transition baby from swaddling, the Parkers tried every sleep sack on the market and every swaddle weaning trick they could find for nearly two weeks and nothing worked to get baby Charlotte to fall and stay asleep.

Stephanie became determined to restore sleep and sanity to their household and set out to find a solution that would soothe Charlotte's startle reflex and provide her the cozy womb-like environment she loved so much but still give her the freedom to roll over and wiggle around in her crib safely. Out of sheer desperation and exhaustion, the Zipadee-Zip was born. The first Zipadee-Zip(R) Stephanie put together on her little sewing machine worked like magic!

To date tens of thousands of Zipadee-Zips have been sold and all from word-of-mouth marketing. It is so rewarding for the Parkers to see other parents and babies getting the sleep they both need and deserve!

For more information, visit sleepingbaby.com.

Interested in writing a guest blog for Sleeping Baby? Send your topic idea to pr@sleepingbaby.com.

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