Cafeteria Could Pose Health Risk for Students

July 22, 2009 - PRLog -- HOUSTON-- From florescent lunch trays to playful banter, the school cafeteria can provide a center for social interaction and good nutrition.  But, new friends and a good joke isn’t all kids can pick up at lunch these days.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, one in four people will become sick and one in 1,000 will require hospitalization this year from food-borne illnesses; more than 200 known diseases can be transmitted through food.

Serving 29 million lunches this year across the U.S., school cafeterias are not immune, says Justin Katona, CEO of HumiTex, a Cypress-based company offering expertise in the field of moisture control, ethylene gas control and energy reduction associated with cooler operations.

“The statistics are staggering,” he said.  “We have situations in some school districts where the issue of food safety is controllable within their coolers, but they are not controlling it.”

Despite adhering to local and federal guidelines for food safety, something as simple as opening a cooler door can create an atmosphere where bacteria and other food-borne illnesses are fostered as a refrigerator’s relative humidity increases.

Many food service vendors like cafeterias, Katona maintains, aren’t even aware of what is happening.

“Many of these locations do not even have calibrated thermometers,” he said, “so while a relative humidity of 75 percent is optimal and 38 degree temperature is desired, many places I’ve visited have coolers testing at 80 to 90 percent humidity and 40 to 42 degrees.

“The end result is students can get sick, operational expenses rise and shelf life of food expires faster.”

HumiTex offers a state-of-the-art humidity filtration program designed to absorb humidity, reduce the spread of bacteria and remove harmful Ethylene gas and Pectin acids while extending the storage life of perishable food.

The filters offered by HumiTex contain Sorbite, Katona said, a mineral found only in the Mohave Desert which has been shown to be effective in controlling humidity.

Aside from containing an outbreak of food-borne illness, school districts can also benefit from the filtering program in other ways, Katona said.

According to one school kitchen manager in Hempstead, the HumiTex filtration program helped determine what it was costing their foodservice operation each year by not controlling humidity.

“We were spending an average of $4800 per year extra by not controlling the humidity in the cooler,” she said.  “The inside air is colder, the ice on the pipes are gone and there is no more condensation or moisture on our racks.”

From 1990 to 2004, more than 11,000 cases of food-borne illnesses associated with schools were documented by the Center of Science in the Public Interest.

In 2003, the Washington State Supreme Court upheld a $4.6 million verdict against a school district after E. coli was transmitted to 11 children who consumed ground beef tacos from their cafeteria.

The most common pathogens responsible for school outbreaks include E. coli, Clostridium perfringens, Norovirus, and Salmonella, according to CSPI’s database.


About HumiTex, LLC.
A member of the Greater Houston Restaurant Association, HumiTex offers state-of-the-art, “green” cold storage conditioning and Humidity Control expertise for restaurants, school districts, assisted living centers and other industries which deal with food preparation and service. HumiTex is based in Cypress, Texas.  Their web site address is www.humitex.com.

About the HumiTex Filtration System
The HumiTex filtration system features Sorbite, a natural mineral mined only in the Mohave Desert, which has been proven to balance humidity levels and lower air temperature in refrigeration units. The HumiTex filtration system uses no electricity and decreases energy usage by reducing chiller run times by half while increasing the shelf life of perishable food up to 50 percent.  For a free two-week trial of HumiTex filtration system, call 866-942-6751.