A Study to Assess the Knowledge and Awareness Regarding Food Adulteration, Food Safety and Standards among Homemaker's in a Selected Rural Community, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

Food is essential to the sustenance of life. Food may be defined as anything eaten or drunk, which meets the needs for energy, body building, regulation and protection of the body. Quality of food is an extremely important aspect of human life as it is directly related to health issue of a person. All consumers want to get the maximum quantity of a commodity for as low price as possible. This attitude of the consumers in conjunction with the intension of the traders as well as the manufacturer to increase the profit margin as high as possible generates a vicious circle. So the quantity of the commodity gets reduced through 'Adulteration. The study's objective was to evaluate homemakers' understanding of food adulteration, food safety, and standards. A descriptive design was selected. Non probability convenience sampling was used to select the 100 samples. The population of the study was considered as homemakers selected participants were from urban community, Padarupalli Nellore. Standard tools were used to collect the data from participants. The content validity of tool was obtained by various experts from medical and surgical department. The pilot study was conducted with 10 samples. Data collection of the main study done for 4 weeks. The data was collected by using self-administered questionnaire. Knowledge scores was evaluated by using inferential statistics. Based on the present study results, more than two thirds (50%) of the home makers have adequate awareness regarding the food adulteration, more than one quarter (15%) of them have good awareness and (5%) of homemakers are not having any knowledge and awareness regarding food adulteration, food safety & standards. In additional, the result has shown that there was significant association between knowledge and awareness scores with selected demographic variables such as Residence, family Type & Monthly income. Hence, Public health required sufficient knowledge of food adulteration, its detection, and consumer protection. The present study had been supported by a serious of other studies. This study recommended that organized and implemented a health education program by specialized academic nursing staff to educate community regarding food adulteration and its preventive measures.