Observation of High School Students' Food Handling Behaviors: Do They Improve following a Food Safety Education Intervention?

Abstract

Youth are a key audience for food safety education. They often engage in risky food handling behaviors, prepare food for others, and have limited experience and knowledge of safe food handling practices. Our goal was to investigate the effectiveness of an existing food handler training program for improving safe food handling behaviors among high school students in Ontario, Canada. However, because no schools agreed to provide control groups, we evaluated whether behaviors changed following delivery of the intervention program and whether changes were sustained over the school term. We measured 32 food safety behaviors, before the intervention and at 2-week and 3-month follow-up evaluations by in-person observations of students ( n = 119) enrolled in grade 10 and 12 Food and Nutrition classes ( n = 8) and who individually prepared recipes. We examined within-student changes in behaviors across the three time points, using mixed effects regression models to model trends in the total food handling score (of a possible 32 behaviors) and subscores for "clean" (17 behaviors), "separate" (14 behaviors), and "cook" (1 behavior), adjusting for student characteristics. At baseline, students ( n = 108) averaged 49.1% (15.7 of 32 behaviors; standard deviation = 5.8) correct food handling behaviors, and only 5.5% (6) of the 108 students used a food thermometer to check the doneness of the chicken (the "cook" behavior). All four behavior score types increased significantly ∼2 weeks postintervention and remained unchanged ∼3 months later. Student characteristics (e.g., having taken a prior food handling course) were not significant predictors of the total number of correctly performed food handling behaviors or of the "clean" or "separate" behaviors, working or volunteering in a food service establishment was the only characteristic significantly associated with food thermometer use (i.e., "cook"). Despite the significant increase in correct behaviors, students continued to use risky practices postintervention, suggesting that the risk of foodborne disease remained.

Young People’s Views on Food Hygiene and Food Safety: A Multicentre Qualitative Study

“…Evaluation of an educational intervention with Canadian high school students found poor hand hygiene and use of temperature probes pre-intervention, and risky practices remained post-intervention [26], eliciting the need for reinforcement to build good food hygiene habits post-education. Habit strength can improve food safety behaviours, which can be strengthened by providing cues to action and reminders [27].…”

Tailoring Can Improve Consumers’ Hygienic Food-Handling Behavior to Reduce the Transmission Risk of Antimicrobial-Resistant Bacteria through Food

“…Therefore, research is required to investigate the effectiveness of tailoring on hygienic food-handling behavior. Previous research on generic interventions found that, despite an increase in hygienic behaviors, participants continued to use risky practices after the intervention, suggesting that the transmission risk of foodborne diseases remained [ 18 ]. A tailored intervention targeting empirically assessed attributes of the recipients that are relevant to the outcome behavior is expected to yield more behavioral change than a generic intervention.…”

The impact of varying educational intervention on consumer understanding and attitude toward reducing sodium in food: Implications for marketing strategies

“…Other research has shown significant effects on educational interventions by assessing other contexts such as food security (Diplock et al, ; Young et al, ), food waste (Romani, Grappi, Bagozzi, & Barone, ; Stöckli, Niklaus, & Dorn, ) and environmental behavior (Zelezny, ). Still, these researchers suggest that further research on educational intervention is needed.…”