Last updated on June 15th, 2023
In this next installment of our F-Tag food safety series, we’re going to discuss tag F-804. This tag is all about how the food is prepared, held after preparation, plated, presented, and kept at safe and appetizing temperatures.
It states that:
Food must be prepared by methods that conserve nutritive value, flavor, and appearance.
Food and drink must be palatable, attractive, and at a safe and appetizing temperature.
How many times have you served food that you knew didn’t look great or prioritized speed and efficiency over quality and appearance? The purpose of this tag is to ensure that never happens in your community again.
It’s simple. When food and beverages look better, people will want to eat or drink more. By providing visually appealing presentations, you’ll nourish your community and improve their quality of life. Improved nutrition and hydration status can also help prevent or aid in recovery from an illness or injury.
What is the Purpose of the F-804 Tag?
To be more specific, this tag intends to ensure that the vitamins and minerals are preserved during cooking, holding, and serving. Improper cooking, holding, and storing methods can decrease the quality of the nutrients in foods, resulting in poorer nutrition for your residents. Proper cooking methods rely on objective and industry-standard accepted best practices, such as:
- Cooking foods in the minimal amount of water needed and for the minimal amount of time needed.
- Holding at a safe temperature for the shortest amount of time reasonable for production.
- Serving at safe temperatures.
- Cooling cooked products quickly if they’re not being used immediately.
- If needed, reheating using gentle heating methods to preserve nutrients.
Because thoughts on food attractiveness and quality can vary from person to person, let’s get into some quick definitions for how we define a few terms important to this tag:
Food Attractiveness: The appearance of the food when served to the residents
Food Palatability: Taste and/or flavor of the food
Proper (safe and appetizing) temperature: Appetizing to the resident and minimizing the risk for scalding and burns
To judge these qualities, ask yourself if you would eat the food you’re serving. Would you be happy with it? Would you enjoy eating it? Would you serve it to friends and family? If your answer is no to any of those questions, chances are that your food surveyor will feel the same way.
What Are Food Inspectors Looking For?
When surveyors evaluate your dining program for compliance with the F-804 tag, they will simply ask residents how they feel about the food you serve.
If there are complaints about food temperatures, palatability, or attractiveness from residents, observations of food not being eaten, or a delay in the passing of food trays, the surveyor will probably ask for a test tray from your dining area.
They may also ask you to provide recipes you use, tray delivery logs, and documentation about resident feedback. It’s important to make sure you’re keeping track of these records so you can provide them to the surveyor if needed.
How Can You Ensure You’re Complying With the F-804 Tag?
This food tag doesn’t have as many concrete to-dos as the other tags in our food safety series. To comply with this tag, your team needs to know the best practices for cooking methods, holding, and serving, rely on their senses and listen to resident preferences.
To ensure compliance, ask yourself the same questions that a surveyor may ask about the meals you serve. Start with the following and make sure everyone on your dining team can answer them:
1. Does food have a distinctly appetizing aroma and appearance, which is varied in color and texture?
2. Is food generally well-seasoned (use of spices, herbs, etc.) and acceptable to residents? If not, did your team ensure all ingredients were available to make recipes as instructed for palatability?
3. Is food prepared in a way to preserve vitamins? How you store and prepare your food should cause minimum loss of nutrients. For example, foods should not be held at hot temperatures for hours before meal service because prolonged heat can cause a loss of vitamins.
4. Is food served at a preferable temperature for residents? This means that hot foods should be served hot and cold foods should be cold. For more guidance about proper safety temperatures for food, check out this blog post about the F-812 tag.
5. Is your team aware of resident complaints about food through the resident council, the grievance/complaint process at your community, or communication directly with staff? What has your community done to address these complaints?
Serving food your residents love and want to eat should be one of the main values of your dining program. Diets based on resident food preferences, also known as liberalized diets, are a cornerstone of person-centered care. Person-centered care means that residents are actively making decisions about their daily lives, including the foods they eat. Culinary Services Group strongly believes in person-centered care and has expertise in creating menus for senior living communities that are healthy and tasty.
We understand that every community is different, and we work with residents to create menus together, not force them to eat generic, pre-developed menus.
We’ll ensure you’re passing F-804 food safety inspections while providing delicious meals to your residents. We take great pride in operating safe, clean kitchens, and we can’t deliver on our promise of delicious, healthy food if your kitchen doesn’t pass state health inspections first.
We take our commitment to safety so seriously that if you sign a contract with us and receive a moderate to a serious violation that requires another inspection, we’ll forgo our management fees until the problem is resolved and your facility passes inspection.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help your dining team stay compliant with the F-804 tag, contact us here.
