Food Safety Education Needs of High-School Students: Leftovers, Lunches, and Microwaves.

BACKGROUND We explored priority areas of food safety education needed by high-school students within Ontario, Canada. METHODS We analyzed transcripts from semistructured interviews with 20 experts in food safety, food safety education in youth, and high-school education in Ontario. Inductive thematic analysis was used to identify priority food safety education needs. RESULTS We identified 4 priority action areas for food safety education targeting students: how to safely do the things they typically do with food; how to keep themselves and their kitchens clean and safe; how microorganisms grow and how they can result in foodborne disease; and how to keep food out of the "danger zone" 4°C to 60°C (40° F to 140° F). The results indicate that students need specific education around the use of microwaves, consumption of convenience meals, preparing and handling foods at school events, and safe transportation of food for lunches, school trips, and sporting events. CONCLUSIONS High-school students need food safety education specific to their usual interactions with food, including the foods, tools, and settings students regularly encounter. Delivery of food safety education should emphasize sequences of safe food-handling behaviors for specific food interactions, such as reheating a meal in the microwave, rather than traditional food safety concepts, such as temperature abuse.

[1]  A. Al-Sakkaf.  Domestic food preparation practices: a review of the reasons for poor home hygiene practices. , 2015, Health promotion international.

[2]  Gary J. Skolits,et al.  Validation of an Interdisciplinary Food Safety Curriculum Targeted at Middle School Students and Correlated to State Educational Standards , 2008 .

[3]  A. Fazil,et al.  Estimates of Foodborne Illness–Related Hospitalizations and Deaths in Canada for 30 Specified Pathogens and Unspecified Agents , 2015, Foodborne pathogens and disease.

[4]  V. Braun,et al.  Using thematic analysis in psychology , 2006 .

[5]  J. Slater.  Is cooking dead? The state of Home Economics Food and Nutrition education in a Canadian province , 2013 .

[6]  D. Middleton,et al.  A descriptive study of reportable gastrointestinal illnesses in Ontario, Canada, from 2007 to 2009 , 2012, BMC Public Health.

[7]  S. Leatherdale,et al.  Food safety knowledge, attitudes and self-reported practices among Ontario high school students , 2015, Canadian Journal of Public Health.

[8]  J. Dubin,et al.  Food safety knowledge of undergraduate students at a Canadian university: results of an online survey , 2016, BMC Public Health.

[9]  Andrea Nesbitt,et al.  Baseline for consumer food safety knowledge and behaviour in Canada , 2014 .

[10]  I. Marklinder,et al.  Self-reported food safety knowledge and behaviour among Home and Consumer Studies students , 2016 .

[11]  J. Sargeant,et al.  High-risk food consumption and food safety practices in a Canadian community. , 2009, Journal of food protection.

[12]  S. Leatherdale,et al.  Over-confident and under-competent: exploring the importance of food safety education specific to high school students , 2017 .

[13]  J. Morse,et al.  Verification Strategies for Establishing Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research , 2002 .

[14]  K. Kniel,et al.  Implementation and Assessment of Food Safety Educational Materials for Secondary and Postsecondary Education , 2014 .

[15]  Kristin M. Brown,et al.  The environment in which behaviours are learned: a pilot assessment of high school teaching kitchens as food safety learning environments in Ontario , 2016 .

[16]  S. Henderson,et al.  Evaluation of food safety knowledge, attitudes and self-reported hand washing practices in FOODSAFE trained and untrained food handlers in British Columbia, Canada , 2013 .

[17]  Ian Young,et al.  Using Risk Factor Weighting to Target and Create Effective Public Health Policy for Campylobacteriosis Prevention in Ontario, Canada , 2013 .

[18]  J. Horrocks,et al.  Demographic determinants of acute gastrointestinal illness in Canada: a population study , 2007, BMC public health.

[19]  Maarten Nauta,et al.  Toward Improving Food Safety in the Domestic Environment: A Multi‐Item Rasch Scale for the Measurement of the Safety Efficacy of Domestic Food‐Handling Practices , 2006, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[20]  W. Mcnab,et al.  Magnitude and distribution of acute, self-reported gastrointestinal illness in a Canadian community , 2004, Epidemiology and Infection.

[21]  T. Humphrey,et al.  Microbiological and observational analysis of cross contamination risks during domestic food preparation , 2004 .

[22]  S. Henson,et al.  Population distribution and burden of acute gastrointestinal illness in British Columbia, Canada , 2006, BMC public health.

[23]  Jaime Chow,et al.  IMPACT OF PROTON: A FOOD HANDLER CERTIFICATION COURSE ON FOOD HANDLERS' KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS , 2012 .

[24]  J. Fereday,et al.  Demonstrating Rigor Using Thematic Analysis: A Hybrid Approach of Inductive and Deductive Coding and Theme Development , 2006 .

[25]  S. Henderson,et al.  Retraining effectiveness in FOODSAFE trained food handlers in British Columbia, Canada , 2014 .

[26]  Andrea Nesbitt,et al.  Estimates of the burden of foodborne illness in Canada for 30 specified pathogens and unspecified agents, circa 2006. , 2013, Foodborne pathogens and disease.