Purpose: The objective of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a food safety curriculum utilizing positive deviance to increase high school students’ food safety knowledge and safe handling practices.
Methods: A pilot group of high school students (n=114) completed an 18-question on-line survey. The survey assessed safe food handling knowledge and personal hygiene based upon the Cook, Chill, Serve and Separate behaviors as well as attitudes towards participating in a food safety class.
Results: The results showed that there is a critical need for effective high school food safety curriculum. The student participants had a low correct rate of the safe food handling knowledge. Merely 52% understood refrigeration and freezing does not kill bacteria. However, more than 80% thought the safest way to know meat was cooked thoroughly was to check the color, an inadequate and potentially risky food handling practice which has been addressed by food safety programs over the years. When the students were asked about knowledge of “choose safe food,” their answers were even more worrying. Only 23% of the students believed that pasteurization does not significantly reduce milk/juice’s nutritional value. One third were aware that irradiation makes meat and poultry safer to eat.
Significance: Findings demonstrate that, high school students need more effective food safety education. Knowledge change and reported behavior as a result of the positive deviance curriculum will be evaluated. Plans are to expand this approach to a larger audience of high school students.