Food Safety Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices among Bulgarian Young People †
Department of Hygiene, Medical Ecology, Professional Diseases and Disaster Medicine, Faculty of Public Health, Medical University-Pleven, 5800 Pleven, Bulgaria
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†
Presented at the 14th European Nutrition Conference FENS 2023, Belgrade, Serbia, 14–17 November 2023.
Proceedings 2023, 91(1), 132; https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023091132
Published: 29 January 2024
(This article belongs to the Proceedings of The 14th European Nutrition Conference FENS 2023)
Abstract
:Background and objective: Providing a population with quality and safe food is one of the main public health problems worldwide. The aim of the present study was to assess the food safety knowledge, attitudes and self-reported food handling practices among a Bulgarian young population. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 60 young people from the Pleven region, Bulgaria, aged 20–29. A pre-tested structured questionnaire was used to collect data on the purchase, storage, preparation, culinary processing and serving of food in a home environment, and also on the demographic profile of the respondents. IBM SPSS v.25 software was applied with a level of statistical significance set at p < 0.05. Results: This study showed that a high proportion of the participants had good levels of knowledge and practices for culinary processing of food—73.9%, food preparation—68.7% and food serving—67.2%. More than half of the participants (59.5–58%) gave correct answers about buying and storing food at home. The highest score was established for the shelf life of products—0.8; rapid cooling of animal foods—0.74; washing fresh fruits and vegetables before consumption—0.94; keeping dishes and utensils in the kitchen clean—0.89; adequate heat treatment of food and quality of drinking water—0.75. A lower percentage of correct answers was found about buying organic food and eating in front of a computer and a mobile device—0.38–0.42. Discussion: The outcome of the survey showed that knowledge, attitude and practice among young people to ensure quality and safe food were at a good level. For young people, educational programs can be developed related to the purchase of organic foods and the optimization of the digital health and food safety interaction.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, V.B.; methodology, V.B., I.R., T.V. and I.S.; software, I.R. and V.B.; validation, V.B., I.R., T.V. and I.S.; formal analysis, V.B., T.V. and I.R.; investigation, V.B., I.R., T.V. and I.S.; data curation, I.S.; writing—original draft preparation, V.B. and I.R.; writing—review and editing, V.B., T.V. and I.R.; supervision, V.B.; project administration, V.B.; funding acquisition, V.B. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement
The study was conducted in accordance with the guidelines laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki and all procedures involving human subjects were approved by the Committee on ethics of scientific research activity at Medical university—Pleven on 3 June 2022 (681-CESRA/2022).
Informed Consent Statement
Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.
Data Availability Statement
Results attained in this study are included in the manuscript. Individual data are not available due to official legal, organizational and data security policies, and ethical restrictions.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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MDPI and ACS Style
Boycheva, V.; Ruseva, I.; Vitkova, T.; Stoilova, I. Food Safety Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices among Bulgarian Young People. Proceedings 2023, 91, 132. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023091132
AMA Style
Boycheva V, Ruseva I, Vitkova T, Stoilova I. Food Safety Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices among Bulgarian Young People. Proceedings. 2023; 91(1):132. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023091132
Chicago/Turabian StyleBoycheva (Birdanova), Vanya, Ivelina Ruseva, Tsvetelina Vitkova, and Irena Stoilova. 2023. "Food Safety Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices among Bulgarian Young People" Proceedings 91, no. 1: 132. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023091132
