Promote Good Health: If you’ll be doing the cooking this holiday season, help everyone stay healthy. According to the experts at the University of Minnesota Agricultural Extension Service, cooks are the most important defenders of food safety. Unclean kitchens, improper personal hygiene, or careless handling of food can carry bacteria that can infect food. A few tips to prevent illness:

• Before you cook, wash your hands thoroughly with soap and hot water. Wash the areas between fingers and under fingernails. If you use your hands to mix food, clean under your nails with a brush.

• Don’t wear rings or other jewelry when you prepare food. Food particles stick in the crevices and corners. If you have pimples, boils, infected cuts or burns on your hands, use disposable plastic gloves to prevent the spread of infection.

• Keep clean hands away from your mouth, nose and hair. Stifle sneezes and coughs with a clean facial tissue and wash your hands again. When you go to the bathroom, always wash your hands before touching food again. When you have a cold or flu, try to stay out of the kitchen. If you handle food, be especially careful about hand-washing. Use utensils instead of hands to touch food.

• Prevent cross-contamination by washing yours hands before touching produce if you’ve worked with raw meat.

• Even if your kitchen is “clean enough to eat off the floor,” don’t pick up spilled food from the floor and eat it or mix it with uncontaminated food.

• A diluted solution of household bleach is a great sanitizer for counters, tools and hands. Use one-tablespoon bleach in a gallon of water.