Safe Food Temperatures

It may seem like something small and meaningless, but knowing how to properly cook your food at the correct temperatures, or keeping your food refrigerated at the correct temperatures, is so important to know.  Failure to understand the correct temperatures to cook your food, and to refrigerate your food can lead to very serious health problems.  What are some of these health problems you might ask? Well, according to the site http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/signs-symptoms-eating-undercooked-chicken-5300.html , consuming undercooked or raw chicken increases your risk of getting salmonella, a bacteria, which may cause headaches, diarrhea, chills, vomiting, fatigue, to name a few symptoms.  Another food born illness you may get is E. Coli bacteria.  E. Coli are already inside us, but there are different strains of E. Coli.  The bad kind are the kind you get from undercooking food.  So, you know that there are some serious health concerns if you do not cook your food at the proper temperatures.  But what are these temperatures?  Well, according to the site http://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/charts/mintemp.html , you can get all of your food temperatures you need.  Also on this site, which many people may not know about, is the resting time for your food after you cook it.  What is this resting time exactly? well, food continues to warm or "cook" after you take it off the grill or out of the oven.  This site gives the resting time needed for foods as well.  Some examples of the cooking temps and resting times on this site are:  for fish? - 145 degrees F with no resting time.  For beef? - 160 degrees F with no waiting time, but for steaks and chops it is 145 degrees F with a resting time of 3 minutes.  For pork and ham? - 145 degrees F with a resting time of 3 minutes.  I hope this blog was helpful in providing why it is important to know the correct temperatures to cook food at and also in giving the temps for specific foods.