Egg Safety in Healthcare Foodservice
Recipes
View all healthcare foodservice recipes >
Safest Choice™ Eggs in Room Service
Chef John Biswanger, Director – Food & Nutrition Services at Lakeland Regional Medical Center (Lakeland, FL) believes Safest Choice™ eggs are a winner for room service, with the benefits of comfort food, low food cost, and efficient preparation to-order.
Comfort Food
“Real eggs are an amazing comfort food,” he points out, “and that’s true at any time of day.” In fact, the Lakeland Food & Nutrition team, which boasts Press Ganey satisfaction scores in the 99th percentile, takes pride in its fresh, made-to-order room service success. “There’s magic in giving patients what they want, when they want it,” says Chef John. He offers eggs 24 X 7.
Explaining the appeal, he says: “Especially for a first meal after being NPO, most patients don’t want meatloaf and potatoes.” In fact, patients are asking for eggs at all times of day, so much so that fresh eggs represent 7% of room service orders.
Omelets Number-One
Safest Choice™ eggs are a very economical menu ingredient. The most popular room service egg entrée at Lakeland is an omelet made to order, says Chef John. And yes, in his experience, even eggs over easy can succeed beautifully in room service, with delivery under a hot dome. The secret, he says, is to cook to a slightly runny white, which continues to cook a little bit in transit. “We do a wonderful job with fresh eggs, and our patients really enjoy the classic comfort.”
Making the Safest Choice for Patients
Chef John is not only a culinary perfectionist; he takes the safety factor seriously. “Statistically, one egg in every palette could contain dangerous Salmonella, so why take chances?” he asks. “Whether fresh eggs are going to be fully cooked or not, I won’t bring ordinary shell eggs into my operation,” he explains, adding, “There’s too great a risk of cross contamination. Making patients sick is not what we’re about. Using pasteurized shell eggs is the only right thing to do.”
The Food Cost Equation
Chef John is just as comfortable whipping up a budget analysis as he is an egg white, and serves as a mentor to his peers in the US, as well as healthcare foodservice visitors from abroad. One reason is the operation’s reputation with food cost control, running above the 99th percentile for food cost in 2010. “We feel it’s a feather in our cap,” he says, “that we can provide exceptional quality at one of the lowest costs in the country.”
Read the Lakeland case study (PDF) to learn more about eggs in healthcare food service >
Why are pasteurized shell eggs so important to food safety in healthcare?
The Salmonella Risk
Salmonella enteritidis (Se) is a common and sometimes lethal bacteria found inside eggs. It can not be detected by our senses, and common food safety handling procedures do not remove the danger. All Salmonella can be killed by high heat, for instance, when eggs are cooked until the yolk is hard and dry. But cooking this way excludes many egg dishes and ruins many culinary techniques. Furthermore, even with the best cooking intentions a significant danger still remains, that of cross-contamination that can occur when food preparers handle contaminated raw eggs in the kitchen.
While Salmonella can cause flu-like symptoms for anyone in the general population, seniors, children under ten, pregnant women and immune compromised individuals are particularly vulnerable and should never be exposed to the risk of Salmonella because of the more severe degrees of illness and risk of death. These individuals are described by the FDA as highly susceptible populations.
The FDA Food Code
To address this risk, The FDA Food Code has described clear guidelines regarding the use of eggs and highly susceptible populations. The FDA Food Code is the compilation of the best known practices in food safety and is authored by the FDA in partnership with the USDA and CDC.
The 2009 FDA Food Code states that raw or soft cooked eggs may not be served to highly susceptible populations for certain applications. Unfortunately, this eliminates many egg dishes and culinary techniques.
The FDA Food Code recommends pasteurized shell eggs and pasteurized egg products as the safe alternatives to regular shell eggs.
The FDA Food Code defines ordinary shell eggs as a potentially hazardous food (PHF-TCS). The Food Code also exempts pasteurized shell eggs from this definition as they are free from the risks of Salmonella and other viable pathogens. Therefore, pasteurized shell eggs can be served, even raw, to all populations including highly susceptible individuals without the risk of bacteria.
The mission of the Food Code is to create guidelines that state and local authorities can adopt to thereby improve food safety. Individual states take the guidelines provided by the FDA and incorporate them into state law. States are constantly updating their food safety regulations and virtually every state has adopted, or is in the process of adopting, a recent version of the Food Code.
Eggs and Nutrition
Egg protein is the gold standard by which all other protein sources are compared and contain virtually every nutritional component necessary in the human diet. Eggs contain hard to find nutrients like Lutein for the eyes and Choline which helps prevent memory loss. Even concerns about cholesterol have been reduced in recent years. Incredibly, eggs remain among the least expensive sources of protein.
Safest Choice™ Egg Nutritional Facts >
Quality of Life
While it doesn’t eliminate the cross contamination risk, cooking an egg until hard will kill the Salmonella bacteria. And one of the advantages of liquid eggs is that they are also pasteurized. But these approaches remove many popular egg dishes from menus and limit culinary techniques. Only pasteurized shell eggs can eliminate the risk of Salmonella and assure quality and menu variety. Make residents and patients happy: Serve them pasteurized shell eggs any way they want!
Safest Choice™ pasteurized shell eggs are the first nationally distributed pasteurized shell eggs that are pasteurized without cooking the eggs.
Other Values Offered By Safest Choice™ pasteurized shell eggs:
- Eliminates the risk of illness and cross-contamination of your kitchen from shell eggs.
- Risk-free menu expansion and flexibility. You can now offer sunny-side up or poached eggs to your residents/patients. A great, tasty protein supplement in a natural form (2 medium shell eggs meet the protein requirement for a single meal). The elderly, children under 10 and people with weakened immune systems, approximately 30% of the population and approximately 80% of health care patients, are at the highest risk for illness and extreme complications from Salmonella enteritidis.
- Use of pasteurized eggs eliminates egg waiver documents or the legal risks associated with a possible foodborne illness.
- Reduction in food cost results due to longer shelf life from our eggs and the ability to measure exact portions based on daily need, not commercial package size limitations.
- Creates an opportunity to promote goodwill with patients and their families.
- Eliminates insurance claims and loss of good will due to illness from shell eggs.
- Our eggs are Kosher Certified.
For more information or to place an order contact us.
For more information or to place an order, contact us: 800-410-7619.