Food Quality Magazine
ISSUE 04 | OCTOBER 2015
Safe Food vs Healthy Food
Vladimir Surčinski, Quality Austria Center d.o.o.
What is the first question that you
ask yourself about the food you buy?
Do you ask yourself is this food safe
to eat or is this food healthy to eat?
We all need safe food, but also a
healthy one.
Choices are sometimes depending
also on amount of money that we
have, and in many cases healthier
choices mean spending money. This
is time when we all want from are
food just to be safe. But the choices
we make today will have effects in
future.
What this means in real life is,
when we consume safe product, for
example the cheeseburger in famous
fast food, is that we are not going to get some poisoning from the
product or get sick in next hour or
next four hours. But if we consume
every day that safe cheeseburger,
for a next few months, we will have
a greater chance to get diabetes or
heart attack.
This means that one safe product is
not always the healthy product. This
also means that if we look at the
food safety standards (HACCP, ISO
22000, FSSC 22000, IFS, BRC, etc.)
they are all focusing on “short time
food safety”.
Global Food Safety Focus
How important food safety in the
world is, shows that it was the theme of World Health Day in 2015.
It is estimated from World Health
Organization and Europe that levels
of foodborne disease are much
higher than it is reported and points
out the need for improved collaboration among sectors to lower the
health risks associated with unsafe
food. During World Health Day
important conclusion was shown:
“Our food chain is longer and more complex than ever before, and
demographic, cultural, economic
and environmental developments
18
– globalized trade, travel and
migration, an ageing population,
changing consumer trends and habits, new technologies, emergencies, climate change and extreme
weather events – are increasing foodborne health risks”.
Some of the World Health
Organization key facts from 2014
that are not much changed in 2015,
and also could be the point for developing of new programs in future
showed the state of food safety in
next few points:
• For sustaining life and for promoting good health it is important to
have access to sufficient amounts of
safe and nutritious food.
• More than 200 diseases (from diarrhea to cancers) are caused by
consuming unsafe food that contains
harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites
or chemical substances.
• It is estimated that 2 million people, including many children, dies
from foodborne and waterborne diarrheal diseases.
• Food safety, nutrition and food
security are more linked then earlier.
This is because unsafe food creates
disease and malnutrition, particularly affecting infants, young children,
elderly and the sick.
• Foodborne diseases have big negative influence on socioeconomic
development putting the pressure
on health care systems, and harming national economies, tourism
and trade.
• Food supply chains are more developed now and cross multiple national borders. To ensure food safety
good collaboration between governments, producers and consumers is
helpful.
With these key facts it is clear that
goals for food chain organizations
are to build and maintain adequate
food safety systems and infrastructures, including laboratory capacities
and surveillance and reporting
systems. Through whole food chain it is needed to have responds
and good managing of food safety
risks, including during emergencies.
Multisector collaboration among public health, animal health, agriculture and other sectors for better communication, information sharing and
joint action is also one of the goals.
And to ensure that food produced
domestically is as safe as possible
internationally it is needed to think
globally and act locally.
One of the mentioned goals by
World Health Organization is the integration of food safety into broader
food policies and programs including
nutrition. And with this it becomes
clear that healthier food ]\