How to Properly Wash Your Hands in Foodservice

One of the most vital steps in food safety is handwashing; it’s both the first and last steps that need to be completed for multiple tasks. In order to prevent the spread of contaminants to employees, customers, food contact surfaces and more, food handlers need to wash their hands properly throughout a shift. If you’re unsure about the recommended way to wash your hands safely, here’s our guide on how to do so. 

6 Steps of Handwashing for Food Handlers

In order to wash your hands properly as a food handler, you need to follow six simple steps. These are the six steps to follow when you wash your hands as a food handler:

• Wet Hands: Turn on the faucet with warm water and wet your hands.

• Get Soap: With either a soap dispenser or a bar of soap, apply some to your hands. 

• Scrub: Now that your hands are wet and soapy, scrub your hands with the soap. Ensure to scrub your entire hands up to just above your wrists. Be sure to get under your fingernails. The CDC recommends scrubbing for at least 20 seconds. 

• Rinse: Once you have completed scrubbing, you can rinse your hands in warm water to wash off all the soap. 

• Dry Your Hands: Either at a hand drying station or with a paper towel, dry off your hands.

• Turn Off Faucet: Use a piece of paper towel to turn off the faucet of the sink so you don’t touch the faucet and contaminate your hands with germs. 

When to Wash Your Hands

You might be wondering when you need to wash your hands as a food handler. There are many instances in which you’ll want to wash your hands before or after a certain task:

Food Handling

You’ll want to wash your hands before and after handling any food items. You will also probably need to do it during as well. This is because if you switch from handling produce to meat or fish, you will need to wash your hands in between. This is to help avoid cross contamination between foods, clean off food residue from your hands before proceeding to other tasks, and ensure your hands are clean before you begin to handle food. It is vital to ensure you wash your hands after handling raw meat to prevent the spread of foodborne illnesses like salmonella. 

Restroom

After you use the restroom you have to wash your hands. This helps ensure your hands are clean after cleaning up with toilet paper before you proceed to interact with customers and co-workers. 

Cleaning

Whether you took out the trash or washed the dishes, you need to wash your hands after. You may think that it was self cleaning to wash the dishes but you were handling possible germs while cleaning. Thus it is important to always wash your hands after cleaning and taking out the trash. 

Wounds

If you get a minor cut at work and need to clean and bandage it, you will want to wash your hands before and after doing so. Washing your hands before bandaging the wound makes sure your hands are clean before touching the wound. This ensures no bacteria gets in the open wound. You will then want to wash it after since blood can be considered a biohazard and you may have come in contact with some while cleaning and bandaging your wound. 

Coughing & Sneezing

Always wash your hands after you cough or sneeze. Even if you are following the sneeze into your elbow rule, you should still wash your hands after. It just helps to be cautious of any germs that may have gotten onto your hand while you sneeze or cough. This way you can avoid transferring any germs. 

Eating

You probably take a meal break during your work shift and eat dinner or lunch on it. You will need to wash your hands before and after eating. You will want to wash your hands before eating so you do not bring any germs from while you were working into contact with the food you’re eating. Then proceed to wash after so you do not cross contaminate anything from the food you ate with the surfaces are your work. 

Where Can Food Workers Wash Hands

A foodservice worker can wash their hands in the designated handwashing sink within the kitchen. These sinks are usually smaller, have a paper towel dispenser mounted close by and can have an automatic faucet. It’s against health code for food workers to wash their hands in sinks designated for food prep or warewashing as the handwashing process could pose a severe contamination threat.

Soap vs. Hand Sanitizer

While hand soap and hand sanitizer are both great tools for cleaning hands and preventing the spread of harmful bacteria, there are major differences between the use of each. Without a doubt, using warm, running water and hand soap is the best way to cleanse and rid your hands of germs and bacteria.

On the flip side, hand sanitizer with an alcohol content of 60% and higher are great for killing off germs and bacteria, but not to the same extent as proper handwashing. While hand sanitizers are great for germ-killing, they don’t replace proper handwashing.

In foodservice settings, hand sanitizers should only be used on hands that have been cleaned with soap and water. Additionally, these hand sanitizers should be approved for being in food contact surfaces.