Food Safety Experts Won't Buy These 5 Items At The Grocery Store

We all need to eat, but what we buy at the supermarket can make us sick if we aren’t careful.

“Among all industrialized nations, the United States is one of the leading countries for research, laws, regulations, practice, and protocols to maintain food safety,” according to Jagdish Khubchandani, a professor of public health at New Mexico State University who specializes in food safety. Yet, he notes that, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, almost a sixth of the American population will experience a foodborne illness every year. According to the Food and Drug Administration, more than 100,000 of those people will be hospitalized and more than 3,000 will die.

Here’s what food safety experts won’t buy at the grocery store, and why you might want to consider avoiding these items, too.

Pre-cut Fruit

Many fresh fruits cut at the supermarket are not a safe choice according to Darin Detwiler, the chair of the National Environmental Health Association’s Food Safety Program and author of “Food Safety: Past, Present, and Predictions.”

While it’s convenient to buy pre-cut fruit, “convenience should not be a priority over protecting ourselves and our families,” he said. Detwiler told HuffPost that he has seen workers in the produce section cleaning the floor, not washing their hands, then cutting and packaging fruits. He explained that supermarket workers preparing food like fresh fruits “is where we find contamination issues, cross-contamination, and increased time when food is no longer safe and pathogens grow before we even buy them.”

Khubchandani added that there is no easy way “to tell if these are not suitable for consumption, for example, if they are rotten, stale or fermented,” until you get them