Adolescents as a consumer: the food safety knowledge and practices

The purpose of this study was to evaluate knowledge, attitudes, and practices about food safety among adolescents. The questionnaire was designed to obtain information about adolescents knowledge, practices and attitudes about food poisoning, personal hygiene, cross-contamination and, temperature control. This questionnaire was administered 2074 randomly selected adolescents from Turkey. Most of adolescents answered items about temperature control, cooling and thawing practices wrongly. Most adolescents considered as informed about food safety (76.0%). About, 8.0% of adolescents have experienced foodborne illnesses in the last year. The food safety knowledge of adolescents were positively correlated with food safety attitudes, education level of participants, education level of mother, education level of father and age (p<0.01). Food safety knowledge and attitudes scores of adolescents was 37.8 +/- 16.4 (100 possible points) and 62.2 +/- 22.7 (100 possible points), respectively. Results also indicated that the mean food safety knowledge and attitude scores were poor among adolescents. As a conclusion, the findings of this study demonstrated that adolescents have lack of food safety knowledge. Therefore, food safety training should be provided for all adolescents in schools. A need for relevant and motivating food safety education exists in this group. Although computer programs, internet, television and other mass media have wider reach, government publications of food safety at home are more trusted, hence, can be used more effectively in educating consumers.