[/floatl]Watchdog: Ditch the take-home sushi after 24 hours, UF expert warns
Are you a fan of ready-to-eat sushi from the grocery store? Do you bring home leftovers from restaurants? Well, say "sayonara" to any leftover sushi after 24 hours, warns a University of Florida food-safety expert. That's because foods can interact when they're placed together. Inside a sushi roll, bacteria sometimes find ideal conditions in the spaces where moist ingredients come in contact with dry ones, or where foods with different acidity levels meet. The result: faster spoilage. "Sushi is meant to be consumed the day you buy it," said Keith Schneider, an associate professor of food science with UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Schneider co-authored a document on safe sushi preparation in retail operations...Raw fish might seem the biggest food-safety hazard in sushi, but Schneider says that's not the case -- it's often frozen and thawed before use to kill parasites. Rice is more likely to cause problems, he said. A bacterium called Bacillus cereus can grow in cooked rice if it's not prepared and handled properly. That's one reason vinegar is essential to good sushi rice -- it provides acidity that discourages the bacterium...more...
