Food Protection Trends - August 2008 - 589

Appendix A Sructured Food Safety Discussion Group Questions How concerned are you about food safety, and what is your biggest food safety concern? How much control do you have over the food prepared in your home? Food Safety Protection P – How do you protect yourself from foodborne illness? How do you know that your food is safe to eat? Food Handling P – How do you thaw different meats such as turkey, ground beef, or steak? Preparation P – When you are cooking food, how do you determine doneness of meat? Risky Food Consumption P – How likely are you to eat foods such as runny eggs, pink hamburger meat, raw or uncooked seafood, and unpasteurized milk or fruit juice? O/B – If you eat them, will you continue to eat them in the future? Sanitation O/B – Do you follow the recommended practice to wash in hot water and soap the cutting board, knife, and your hands after cutting meat and before handling other foods? Handwashing P – How frequently do you wash your hands when preparing food? O/B – How important is that to you? Cooling and Storage of Foods P – After you cook foods, how quickly do you refrigerate them and in what portions do you refrigerate? O/B – How do you respond to the recommendations that food be cooled in the refrigerator immediately after cooking or eating and that portions should be divided so that food cools more quickly and thoroughly? Openness to Change/Barriers to Change O/B – If you learned of new or different food preparation or storage practices, how likely would you be to make changes to use those practices? O/B – What would prevent you from using those practices? O/B – After learning correct thawing principles, would you change any of your thawing practices? O/B – After learning that temperature is the best measure of doneness, would you use temperature as a determinant? P = Practice question, O/B = Openness to change/Barriers to change question for example. In addition, these students were only mildly concerned about food safety when at restaurants. Previous survey research has shown that college students placed themselves at increased risk for foodborne illness because they were not aware of and/or did not adhere to food safety guidelines, including safe food handling and storage (2, 3, 7, 11, 15). In this study, food safety practices seemed to vary by college major, which reflects previous food safety education differences, primarily through educational coursework. For example, those with previous classroom food safety education were more likely to correctly thaw and store foods. Food safety practices also depended, in part, on practices observed in the students’ childhood homes. By mimicking unsafe practices observed in their childhood homes, many students placed themselves at risk for foodborne illness. In this study, students often inappropriately relied on visual indicators to determine whether foods were safe to eat, particularly in the case of ground meat. Students did not know how to use food thermometers but reported willingness to learn if costs were low and they received accessible information on correct usage. This research agrees with previous work showing that college students consumed high-risk foods (2, 3, 11, 15). We found that students lacked knowledge about which foods were high-risk and about using pasteurized eggs or egg substitutes in cookie dough. They considered raw meats and rare hamburger to be high risk, but not pink meats such as undercooked steaks, which still present a risk, although lower AUGUST 2008 | FOOD PROTECTION TRENDS 589

Food Protection Trends - August 2008

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