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Comic Book Teaches About Food Poisoning

By Dan Flynn and Suzanna Schreck

The United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) now has a Web page specifically for kids' and teens' food safety education.

This Website has everything from comic books, word searches, and puzzles, to coloring and activity pages. There are also easy to read articles about food safety designed to engage kids and teens.
 
The comic books aim to deliver information through easy to understand principles and fun story lines.

One of the comic books, Let Me Tell You How Dad Got Sick, is particularly engaging. It is scripted like a comic book, and is at a fairly easy reading level. It's both a fun and exciting way for kids and teens alike to learn about food safety.

In the comic book, a young boy tells the story of how his dad became ill after eating chicken that had been left on the counter for a long period of time.  Near the end of the story the doctor explains to the family why the Dad was sick and how his illness could have been prevented by refrigerating the chicken within two hours of cooking it.

This comic book is quite short; only about eight pages, which keeps children interested while teaching them important food safety principles.

Let Me Tell You How My Dad Got Sick focuses on the principle of preventing illness from spoiled food.  Towards the end of the comic there is a chart with different types of food and the length of time they can be in the refrigerator and freezer before going bad.  

FSIS has also provided four simple steps to prevent foodborne illness.  These steps are also illustrated using the characters from the comic book.  These steps include washing your hands for 20 seconds, keeping raw foods away from ready to eat foods, cooking food to safe internal temperatures, and placing leftovers in the refrigerator right away. 

Full post as published by Food Safety News on April 27, 2010 (boomark / email).