Assessment of food hygiene knowledge and practices among secondary school students in Ethiope East Local Government Area of Delta State

Abstract

Food hygiene habits among secondary school students are still a major issue of collective health concern especially in a setting where the students are likely to take food offered by vendors, school canteens and informal businesses. Lack of knowledge and practice may expose the student to food borne diseases, thus impacting their health and school performance. This paper thus evaluated the knowledge and practices of food hygiene among secondary school students in Ethiope East Local Government Area in Delta State, Nigeria. Out of the population of approximately 1,200 students a sample of 300 was sampled through a multistage sampling method so that there was appropriate representation. The structured questionnaire was used to gather data and it was validated by experts and tested to determine its reliability. The tool not only recorded demographic but also hygiene habits. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyze the data where a benchmark of 2.50 was used to make decisions and interpretations. The findings revealed that among the 300 respondents, 44 percent were male and 56 percent were female, which means that there were more women respondents. Results on knowledge of food hygiene practices showed that the items had a mean score of more than 2.50, which indicated that the students had sufficient knowledge of good hygiene such as handwashing, safe food handling and consumption of clean water. Equally, the data on real life practices revealed that the students tended to adhere to good hygienic practices including washing hands, cleaning utensils and avoiding contaminated food. Nevertheless, the lowest mean, but within acceptable ranges, indicates that there were overall positive hygiene behaviors towards sharing of eating utensils. The researchers found out that though students show sufficient knowledge of food hygiene and overall good food hygiene practices, there should be continuous sensitization and reinforcement of good hygiene behaviours in order to reduce health risks.