A Survey on Food Handling Knowledge and Practices Among Housewives in Selayang, Selangor

Abstract

Foodborne illness is one of the major threats to global health security without proper solution until today. It is very influential to public health and becomes one of the economic burdens worldwide where many cases are associated with preparation of food especially by housewives at home. Therefore, housewives have an important role in preventing the occurrence of foodborne illness. Housewives need to concentrate carefully on food safety for the preparation of meals as this could help them overcome the problem. This shows that food safety among housewives towards food is well worth for investigation. This study was aimed to determine the food safety knowledge and practices among housewives in Selayang, Selangor. A cross-sectional study was carried out between July and August involving 200 respondents in Selayang, Selangor. This research used FightBac! Concept for the determination of food safety knowledge and practices among housewives. Data were collected and analysed using SPSS version 16.0 and Minitab Software. Result showed that respondents had good level of food safety knowledge based on ‘clean’ concept only. They had poor knowledge level based on ‘chill’, ‘separate’ and ‘cook’ concepts. Next, housewives had good level of food safety practices also based on ‘clean’ concept only while they had average level for ‘chill’, ‘separate’ and ‘cook’ concepts. Therefore, the most significant food safety knowledge and practice that need to be changed by housewives were chill-based knowledge and separate-based practice respectively to reduce the risk of foodborne illness in the family. In addition, there was a significant positive (moderate) relationship between the food safety knowledge and practices based on ‘clean’ concept (r = 0.450, p<0.05). There was also a significant positive but weak relationship between the food safety knowledge and practices based on ‘cook’ concept (r = 0.380, p<0.05). Besides, there was no significant relationship between food safety knowledge and practices based on ‘chill’ and ‘separate’ concept. For the comparison between level of food safety knowledge and practices among housewives’ age, education level and ethnicity, there was no significant difference between all the demographic characteristics that being compared. In conclusion, this research is beneficial to provide information for future study in related field.