Detergent and Sanitizers.

What are Detergents?
Detergents are chemicals used in the food industry to remove food soils and stains during the cleaning process.
What are Sanitizers?
Sanitizers are chemicals used on organic or food handling equipments to REDUCE bacterial count to safe levels from a public viewpoint.

What is the difference between Detergents and Sanitizers?
The main difference between detergents and sanitizers are:
• Detergents are used to clean up food soil or stains from a surface while sanitizers are used for keeping bacteria count at a safe level on surface or equipments
• Sanitizers tend to be used in the form of aerosols (spray form) as it is usually used on surfaces and surface of equipments, therefore its more cost effective. While detergents are used at higher concentrations to removes stains thus it tend to be in a concentrated chemical form
Therefore, sanitizers and detergents are used hand in hand.

What kinds of detergents are available
• Alkaline
- Alkaline is the strongest at removing food soils however, due to the chemical compositions it is used only on hard surfaces like floor and wall tiles as it may corrode or cause damages to metal equipments and hazardous to human skin. Used mainly for cleaning grease stain on floor or wall
• Acidic
-Acidic detergents are good for removing mineral salts that crystallize around equipments.(White Scales that build up around metal taps)

• Neutral
-Neutral detergents are the most commonly found detergents in an household, it is good for light duty cleaning like food soils from burnt food.

What types of Sanitizers are available
• Chlorine (Chlorine Dioxide)
-Corrosive in nature may cause irritation to skin and effective in most pH environment, inactivated by organic materials; cheapest
• Iodophors
-Corrosive, Does not irritates the skin, not effective at all pH except neutral(5-8) ; Expensive
• Quaternary Ammonium Compounds
-Non Corrosive, Does not irritates the skin, effective in most pH conditions ; Moderately expensive
• Acid Anionic
-Slightly Corrosive, Slightly Irritates the skin, effective only at acidic pH; moderately expensive
• Alcohol
- Non Corrosive, Does not irritates skin, effective at neutral pH; moderately expensive
• Peroxyacetic Acid
-Slightly corrosive, Does Not irritates the skin, effective at most pH conditions; moderately expensive

Recommended Detergents for a Salad Bar

At the end of the day when washing utensils and equipments that handles food. It is recommended that you use the neutral detergents to clean and remove any food soils. As Neutral Detergents are firstly cost effective for the cleaning power for the nature of food stain it used on. Examples for neutral detergents would be common dishwashing detergents like MaMa Lemon or UIC.

However, for equipments like the deep fryer. The nature of the food soils will tend to be high in grease. Hence it is recommended to use alkaline detergents as it has the highest cleaning power to provide an emulsion that will degrease the oil stains from the deep fryer. Examples of alkaline detergents would be degreasers for this scenario.

At the end of every day where service and operations ceases, the kitchen has to do a full clean down operations, hence during this operations it is recommended to use the strong alkaline detergents to clean hard surfaces such as floor and wall tiles. Examples of strong alkaline Detergents are detergents contain caustic soda as an ingredient or sodium hydroxide. Although these detergents do not come cheap, it is essential for the business in a long run and the usage is only once a day at specified concentration (depending on the size of area to be cleaned). Hence in the long run it is not expensive and can be seen as a investment to keeping the business safe.

Sanitizers recommended for a Salad Bar
When starting up or preparing ingredients sanitizing is important as this step prevents many food borne illness and out breaks. Thus when sanitizing it is recommended to use an alcohol sanitizer (preferably spray) as it is highly evaporative and alcohol have good cleaning power and it is not messy. As it does not requires rinsing. Examples of alcohol aerosols are alchoquats.
At the end of operations day, when everything is cleaning down, fabrics such as table cloths and aprons can be soaked in chlorine based sanitizer such as Chlorox as such fabrics are constantly in contact with food surfaces hence over the course of the day it would pick up numerous bacteria which will be trapped among the fibres. If not sanitized properly bacteria can be transferred to food surfaces or even worst food itself and contaminating it. Hence chlorine based sanitizers are recommended firstly for It’s cost effectiveness and it’s ability to still function in wide range of pH.
Hand Sanitizers may also be included for customers who just came into the restaurant, which should be placed near the sink. Hand sanitizers comes in different form, there those which does not require rinsing like those alcohol sanitizers.