Safe Grocery Shopping During Coronavirus Time

I highly recommend watching the whole video, but for those who can't or would rather not, here's a summary.

The video is by Dr. Jeffrey VanWingen, a family physician in Michigan, explaining how to safely bring groceries or take out food into your home.

Dr. VanWingen explains that at least at the time of this video, there was conflicting data on how long coronavirus can survive outside the human body: according to some of the data, it can live aerosolized for three hours, on cardboard for one hour, and on plastic or metal surfaces for three days. As such, if possible, non-perishable food should be left outside the house or at least somewhere isolated for three days before use, if possible. Similarly, if you use a shopping service to get food, don't let the deliverers inside your home - they can drop off the food outside.

For food that you're bringing inside right away (e.g. perishables), you need to thouroughly disinfect the containers, and in some cases, the food itself. VanWingen puts it this way: imagine that your groceries are covered in glitter and disinfectant/soap has the power to dissolve this glitter. Your goal is to get rid of all the glitter without getting any on your home, hands, or especially on your face. First of all, when out shopping, keep in mind the following tips:

• Wipe down your cart.

• Don't touch items unless you know you are going to buy them.

• Don't shop if you have respiratory symptoms or have been exposed.

• If possible, go shopping in place of any loved ones over 60.

• Plan what you will buy for 2 weeks.

We now return to the process of disinfecting groceries once you've brought them home. To do so, divide your counter into two parts with a line of tape. Sanitize both sides, such as by spraying disinfectant onto a paper towel and wiping the counter down. Next, designate a "clean" side and a "dirty" side. Put your groceries (which we assume to be "dirty") on the dirty side and move them to the clean side (which we assume to be coronavirus-free) only after disinfecting. Get rid of unnecessary packaging - for example, if you have a cardboard box containing a plastic container of cereal, get rid of the cardboard box - the plastic container likely hasn't been touched for a few days, but coronavirus could be living on the box itself. Just try to make sure the plastic container doesn't touch the outside of the cardboard box. In this manner, get rid of as much external packaging as you can. Note that you can spray down thicker surfaces with disinfectant directly without needing to worry about spraying the food inside. And with all products, try to focus on disinfecting the areas you think human hands will have touched more. Wash fruits like you wash your hands: for at least 20 seconds, and with soap.

Dr. VanWingen also talks about getting take out food. Again, you should use tape to divide your counter into a "dirty" and a "clean" side and make your goal to get all the food from the dirty side to the clean side. Coronavirus doesn't do well in food, so the wrappers and packaging are the main issue. Try to get the food out of the packaging without it touching the outside of the packaging. Now is also a good time to buy hot goods rather than frozen goods - based on what we know about other strains of coronavirus, the virus can survive in frozen environments for 2 years but can be destroyed by only a few seconds in the microwave. As such, when appropriate, microwave your food as much as you can - preferably to the point where you can see steam. With sauces, try to get the sauce out of the container without the sauce touching the outside of the container.