Street food eating habits for university students

Abstract

Food borne disease is one of the most serious health problems in many developing countries in the world including Bangladesh, India, etc. The problem is getting more remarkable because of governing poor quality of food handling techniques and also poor quality of sanitation practices and habits due to lack of proper knowledge. Street food vending has been increasing for several years in many countries all around the world and also has become very popular to the consumers but this has also exposed with alarming rate of public health challenges with evidence of food borne diseases. The objective of this study is to get the assessment of the level of knowledge, attitude, habits and practices about food safety among street food consumers of university students. The study was conducted using a crosssectional online survey. A total of 100 street food consumers of university students were selected with a purpose of sampling technique and the data were collected by conducting online media as it was an online survey and it was done through several questionnaire. In this study participants majority were of the age group 20 to 29 years old and male were 58.6% and female were 41.4%.All the consumers were university students and majority of them were in 4th year in their study level.95% of the consumers were heard food hygiene but the majority of these participants (62%) don’t consult with a doctor and take home remedies. 84.8% of these participants spend below 200Tk daily to consume street food. In case of choosing street food 68% of these participants gives priority on price and quality, as well as 47.5% consumers choose street food in which the vendors are doing more business. 93.9% participants believe in washing hands before eating and 69.4% participants ensure that the street food they buy is cooked and served.80.2% use portable drinking water. 70% participants observe that the vending cart and surroundings kept clean, 64.6% participants observe that vendors kept the raw food and cooked food seperately and 58.6% observe that vendors kept the food covered but only 15% participants are satisfied with surrounding environmental conditions of street food vendors and majority of the participants (76%) are not satisfied. All this findings are very much significant and important as it express the risk which is related with safety appearance of street food. The importance of carrying out food safety education programmes and training programmes for all the consumers as well as the vendors of street food in establishing an overall knowledge based on a proper attitude, good practices which in association with the food industry, regulatory agencies as well as the administration of the government is emphasized.