Food Safety Awareness: Concerns, Practices, and Openness to Change of College Students with Health and Non-Health Majors
- Objective:
- Determine college students’ food safety awareness, including concerns, food practices, and openness to change.
- Participants:
- Convenience sample of thirty, health and non-health majors; upperclassmen, average age 21, primarily white non-Hispanic females.
- Methods:
- Using focused discussion groups, students’ food safety knowledge and practices including food handling, preparation, storage, thermometer use, risky food consumption, and willingness to change undesirable practices were examined.
- Results:
- Students perceived low risk for foodborne illness, seldom reported use of food thermometers, and used color of meat and juices to determine doneness. Non-health majors thawed foods according to undesirable practices observed in the childhood home, most of which are no longer recommended. Perceived and stated barriers to implementing recommended food safety procedures for health and non-health majors included cost, time, and convenience.
- Conclusions:
- College students, especially non-health majors, had low food safety awareness and many unsafe food handling practices. Students were open to economical and time efficient changes in practices.
Reference Information:
Yarrow L, Remig V, Higgins M. Food Safety Awareness: Concerns, Practices, and Openness to Change of College Students with Health and Non-Health Majors. Food Protection Trends (2008):Vol. 28, No. 7, Pgs 585-591.
This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008. It is filed under Human Nutrition and is tagged with college students, discussion groups, food safety.