WATCH: Handy tips for food safety

27 September 2016 - 13:26 By WENDY KNOWLER
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Got three minutes to spare? Do yourself a favour and watch third-year Stellenbosch University food science student Alexandra Rust’s Guide to Food Safety video.

Her engaging, user-friendly advice on how to defrost and cook meat safely, avoid contaminated cutting boards, disinfect a cleaning sponge and more recently earned her an honourable mention from The International Union of Food Science and Technology’s (IUFoST) governing council.

It began as a university assignment. “I wanted to focus on identifying those everyday habits that create an environment for microbial growth and put us at risk of food-borne illness,” she said. “It’s more common than most people realise.”

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“Essentially I wanted to show consumers how to take care of their food, so it can take care of them.”

Rust’s lecturer encouraged her to submit the video after hearing about IUFoST’s student film competition.

The filming process took her three to four days and the editing another week.

  • Healthy food too expensive for most South AfricansYou may not have done the sums, but if you push a trolley around a supermarket regularly, you’ll know that the price of food has shot up alarmingly this year.  

“It was quite a challenge,” Rust said. “It took me about 10 attempts to encode the final video because my laptop kept crashing.”

Of course, the video needed a soundtrack - one without a copyright. “Luckily a good friend of mine, who performs under the name The Found Wonder, gave me permission to use a single he had recently released.” Problem solved.

The IUFoST recognition took Rust by surprise. “I practice photography in my spare time but I had never made any serious attempt at filming before, so I'm glad that IUFoST found it relevant and enjoyable.”

Watch and learn: 

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