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Universally loved, many people understandably have high expectations of the food they consume. Because of this, the question of ‘trust’ often comes into play. Buying a consumable product simply isn’t the same as purchasing any other variety, and many customers fairly require an extra set of assurances before they feel confident enough to enjoy what’s on offer. It could be said that the advent of technology has kept the buying public positively briefed on what to expect from their food too.
It’s never a bad idea to be more selective about where you source your food from, or to feel better about the food related choices you make. But how can you increase the effectiveness of these goals? What methods may help you feel more trust in your food? Read on to find out.
Review Food Hygiene Ratings
While eating out is often viewed as a ‘treat’, if you pick the wrong establishment, you may only end up walking away with something as ugly as food poisoning.
Some firms take their food responsibility responsibilities more seriously than others. Therefore, you can use official sources to review the food hygiene ratings of businesses you’re considering eating with. This should give you a level of insight into their best practices, and help you understand how much they value the safety of their customers.
It’s important to note that food hygiene ratings aren’t necessarily synonymous with food quality. However, this is an important distinction to make. While food may look and taste nice, bacteria and germs can still fester if the produce was stored or handled poorly, so food hygiene ratings will give you a better idea of what you’re dealing with perhaps than appetising marketing materials or hastily left customer reviews that don’t paint the full picture.
Follow Broadsheet Coverage
The mainstream media frequently run news items that expose certain brands for the frauds they really are.
For example, Iceland have the slogan “food you can trust” on the front of their shops, but a 2019 BBC News report showed that the brand continued to sell own-brand products that contained palm oil, despite pledging to stop doing so the year prior due to its demand devastating rainforests in Asia. Consequently, you can’t always take the word of these big chains at face value, particularly when it comes to the food that they sell.
You’ve likely seen similar stories elsewhere for yourself. Still, staying updated on all the broadsheet coverage can give you insight into the work history of the people supplying you your food. What’re their ethical values, if any? Do they have a track record of conflating the truth? If you stay updated, you may feel more confident in your decisions when selecting who to buy food from.
Explore Food Intolerance Testing
Although not life threatening, food intolerances can still be an enormous nuisance.
Therefore, identifying them in a speedy process is in your best interests, enabling you to avoid certain goods and get back to your life sooner rather than later. Fortunately, you can learn more about your diet in this regard thanks to Check My Body Health, who provide UK government approved food sensitivity tests to potentially inform you about any intolerances you may harbour. Their results do not masquerade as medical diagnoses, however, so consulting your GP alongside the data given to you here is advisable.
Food intolerance tests can simply help you to cater to your own needs. After all, symptoms can be mild indeed, ranging from increased flatulence to even skin rashes. You may not notice the immediate patterns and correlations between what you eat and how your body responds, but a food intolerance test may help you to connect the dots and make some dietary adjustments for your betterment. That way, you can trust your food all the more, even at a simpler level.
Learn Food Labelling Requirements
Most people are aware that packaged food products should feature labelling descriptions. However, deciphering the information and knowing what data to look for amidst all the fine print and miniscule data can be quite difficult.
If you’re committing yourself to double-checking labels more, then it may help to read the procedures that’re required in food labelling best practices. You may expect to find the name of the food, preparation instructions, and the food’s ingredients already, but finer points can be included in labels also. For example, all the following can be found there also:
- Date of storage, and the conditions the food was kept in.
- Manufacturer, packer, and seller information.
- Lot or batch numbers
It may help to seek out this information specifically so that you can hold businesses to account should you have a bad experience. Additionally, the batch numbers will help should food firms ever demand a recall of their faulty goods. Ultimately, this information should give you peace of mind, and highlight which businesses operate with complete transparency.
