Improving Food Safe Recipe Research and Training: Creating Recipes with Food Safety in Mind

Open Access
- Author:
- Palucki, Alexis
- Area of Honors:
- Food Science
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Catherine Nettles Cutter, Thesis Supervisor
Pamela Hankey Giblin, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- PublicHealth
Food Safety
Foodborne Illnesses - Abstract:
- Several approaches have been taken to improve food safety behaviors among consumers, but there is still a deficit in the actual practice of these behaviors. This study, funded by a College of Agricultural Science’s “Research to Practice” grant, measured participants’ willingness to incorporate food safety terms into recipes and observed food safety practice changes before and after a virtual training. Volunteer organizations serving food to underserved audiences in Pennsylvania were recruited (PSU IRB STUDY00017309). First, participants followed a standardized recipe for chicken salad wraps and recorded their actions on an iPad. Second, participants underwent a virtual training session with Extension educators to learn about incorporating proper food safety terms into their recipes and implementing food safety practices. Third, participants followed the same recipe modified with food safety terms and recorded their food preparation on the iPads. PSU Food Safety Extension educators uploaded all videos onto a secure website. A scoring tool was developed to evaluate observed food safety practices captured on the pre- and post-training videos. Study results demonstrated that by incorporating food safety terms into recipes, participants increased their ability to identify and correct food safety practices during food preparation. Follow-up surveys indicated most participants were confident about integrating food safety terms into one or more of their organization’s recipes. Given the results of this project, the “4-H Food Challenge” and many Penn State Extension Health and Wellness program recipes were updated to include current food safety recipe terminology. Educational materials were developed in English and Spanish and will be used for future team programming. Two instructional videos also were produced for 4-H and food volunteer groups. This study suggests that participants can improve food safety practices by including new food safety terminology in recipes, thereby reducing the risk of foodborne illness associated with this audience.