Health education models and food hygiene education

Abstract

Education of food industry personnel in hygiene matters has been recommended as a means of improving food handling practices and thus the safety of food. Provision has been made within the Food Safety Act 1990 for the making of regulations to specify the nature and extent of such training. There is, however, a lack of documentary evidence of improvements in food hygiene standards which can be directly related to education or training. Evaluations of formal food hygiene education courses have identified increased knowledge levels of course participants and improvements in the relationship between food industry and enforcement personnel. This paper considers the operation of food hygiene training in the context of health education theory. Interpretation of this suggests that further evaluation of training is warranted prior to programme development and that behavioural change might be more likely to occur if the settings approach to health promotion were to be adopted in food premises.

Restaurant Employees’ Food Handling Practices in Irbid City, Jordan

“…Examples of these studies are: Walker et al (2003), Bas et al (2006), Pragle et al (2007), Howells et al (2008), Sanlier and Konaklioglu (2012), Soares et al (2012), Sharif et al (2013), Kubde et al (2016) and Akabanda et al (2017); the majority in this group employed the Knowledge Attitudes Practice (KAP) model. It suggests that increasing of individuals' knowledge, will change their attitudes toward certain behaviour and so ultimately generates a behavioural alteration (Rennie, 1995). Previous studies of food handlers' practices provided indications to possible socio-demographic factors affecting these practices including: age and gender of food handlers (Altekruse et al, 1999;Patil et al, 2004;Green & Selman, 2005;Sanlier, 2009) and education (Angelillo et al, 2000).…”

Food Sanitation Knowledge, Attitude, and Behavior for the University Restaurants Employees

“…It has been suggested that this disparity between knowledge and practice occurs because of much of the existing training. Rennie [14] showed that the KAP model assumes that an individual's behavior or practice (P) is dependent on their knowledge (K) and suggested that the mere provision of information will lead directly to a change in attitude (A) and consequently a change in behavior. It has been suggested that this model is flawed in its assumption that knowledge is the main precursor to behavioral change [15].…”

Social and Personal Determining Factors in the Results on Contents of Food Handlers’ Formation Plans

“…Rennie [22] argues that too little emphasis is placed on changing individuals' beliefs and attitudes and that the model fails to take into account cultural, social and environmental influences.…”

“…Researchers have advocated using theories and models from the behavioral sciences to improve our understanding of food hygiene behavior [22,27]. Social cognitive theories such as the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) [28], the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) [24] and the Health Belief Model (HBM) [26] have provided a framework to investigate a wide range of behaviors [30] including food safety behavior in the home [30][31][32] and hand hygiene behavior in hospitals [33].…”

“…Some authors [22,23] describe how Social Cognition Models (SCMs) such as "The Theory of Planned Behavior" [24], "Tones Health Action Model" [25] and "The Health Belief Model" [26] could be used to understand food hygiene behavior.…”