Over-confident and under-competent: exploring the importance of food safety education specific to high school students

Abstract

The objective of this study was to explore age-specific reasons why food safety education might be important for high school students (in Ontario, Canada), from a variety of expert perspectives. In May 2014, semi-structured key informant interviews (n = 20) were conducted with food safety and youth education experts. A thematic analysis of verbatim transcripts of the interviews was conducted. Participants identified three major reasons why food safety is important for high school students: (i) they have current and personal needs for food safety information, (ii) high school is an ideal time and place to instill life-long good habits, and (iii) they are part of the foodborne illness risk landscape. Food safety education was deemed important for high school students, who were seen as a unique and captive audience in need of safe food handling skills, now and in the future, for a variety of reasons: potential employment advantages, improved food literacy, combating their sense of “invincibility,” and helping instill essential life skills that they may not get elsewhere. These results confirm the importance of food safety education for high school students and highlight the need to determine age-appropriate interventions and methods to engage high school students and improve their safe food handling practices.