Food Safety, Immunity and COVID-19: A Review

Abstract

Improving immunity against the coronavirus among all countries is one of the vital measures to combat the COVID-19 unprecedented threat to the entire world. People with a weak immune system and co-morbid conditions like cardiac disorders, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and respiratory disorders are at high-risk population for COVID-19 disease complications. Immunity lower with conditions such as pregnancy, old age, and also bad habits like smoking, tobacco use, and alcoholism is aggravating the risk of COVID-19. This review aims to study food safety, hygiene, behavioural changes and their association with enhancement of immunity to defeat COVID-19. Totally 46 research articles were chosen from Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, PubMed, Foods, Food Science & Nutrition, Immunity perspective, and other reputed journals. Food safety is considered one of the best immunity-boosting key factors. All age groups especially young adolescents should be educated about the maintenance of a healthy lifestyle particularly food safety and prevention of infectious diseases like COVID-19. Strict implementation of food safety regulations such as food handling practices throughout the food chain in agriculture, food chain process, home kitchens, food handlers, and consumers to prevent food contamination by the means of physical, chemical, and pathogenic exposures like bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitic infections especially life-threatening. Unhygienic food practices lower the immunity power and result in vulnerable diseases like COVID-19. Practising standard food safety measures can be found very useful in boosting the immunity of the community and protecting the life of the people against COVID-19 health complications.

Consumers’ attitudes toward probiotic dairy products in the post-Covid-19 normalization process

“…Results also revealed no statistically significant difference in the other opinions for probiotic foods based on contracting Covid-19 (p>0.05). In this context, studies emphasized that people should attend to their diets to prevent and control Covid-19 (Ashby, 2020;Mehta, 2020;Indumathi & Sharma, 2022;Kaushal et al, 2022). It was also found that probiotic products strengthened the immune system by fighting pathogens when consumed in sufficient quantities (Akpinar & Kaplan-Turkoz, 2019;Topuz, 2020).…”