Sex wise comparison of knowledge regarding food adulteration in urban Jaipur: A cross-sectional study
Abstract
Adulteration of food is a major problem in developing world like India. There are many acts for preventing adulteration of food and consumers are assumed to know their responsibilities regarding food adulteration. So this analytic observational study was conducted to know the awareness status of male and females regarding food adulteration. For this 150 males and 159 females were interrogated and significance of difference in proportion of male and females were inferred by Chi-square test. It was found that only 10% subjects have good knowledge regarding adulteration. On sex wise comparison of this knowledge, 6% men’s scored good marks, 64% men’s scored average marks and 30%, men’s scored poor marks whereas women’s showed 14% women’s scored good marks, 74% women’s scored average marks and 12% women’s scored poor marks. So females were having better knowledge than males regarding food adulteration.
Keywords
Download Options
Introduction
There are three basic needs of life food, cloth and roof. But it’s possible to live without cloth and roof but without food life is not possible. Food is an important and basic biological need for living; food is foundation for good health. Adulteration means when the quality of the food is lowered or affected by the addition of substances which are injurious to health or by the removal of substances which are nutritious. It is defined as the act of intentionally debasing the quality of food offered for sale either by the admixture or substitution of inferior substances or by the removal of some valuable ingredient.
Adulteration of food is an old age problem. It consist of a large number of practices, e.g., mixing, substitution, concealing the quality, putting up decomposed food for sale, misbranding or giving false labels and addition of toxicants. Health hazards related to foods and food products are considered to be a major problem particularly in developing and less-developed countries. 1,2 Food should be without or only with acceptable and safe levels of adulterants, contaminants or any other substances that may make food hazardous to health. These adultered food may deprive nutrients essential for proper body growth and development.3 There are many standard for food like ISI, Agmark etc. The Hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) system has now been introduced to identify, evaluate and control hazards arising from crop harvest until the point of consumption. 4
In India, food safety is a growing problem with adulteration and contamination of essential foods that can be a potential source of disease infection or toxic poisoning. Food spoilage occurs mostly during handling from the primary producers to the consumers (e.g. food production, processing, packaging, distribution, storage, cooking or serving). Adulterants (non-nutritious substances) are intentionally/deliberately added or unintentionally enter into food. Similarly, presence of harmful chemicals or microorganisms including those unaffected by thermal processing is common.
Conclusion
It can be concluded from this study that only 10% subjects have good knowledge regarding adulteration. It was concluded from this study that females were having better knowledge than males regarding food adulteration i.e. 14% females were having good knowledge regarding food adulteration in comparison to only 6% of males. So there is strong need to create awareness regarding food adulteration to prevent health hazards from food adulteration.