Food Handling Research Among the Elderly

When it comes to handling food, how safe are you? Is your meat stored at the proper temperature? Do you use different or clean cutting board when slicing meat and vegetables?

The misuse of these safety procedures are what drive a group of K-State professors to do research about food safety.

Kristina Boone, along with Joye Gordon, project director, and principal investigators Karen Penner and Valentina Remig, is using a USDA Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Services (CSREES) grant to study food handling practices of people aged 65-and-over.

A year and a half into the three-year project, Boone feels the project is going well. "We had theories about safe food handling we were expecting to come up. Some have but others have not, but that is typical when doing research," she said.

Boone and Gordon have presented the first of the findings at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference and a more complete paper at the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education.

Some of the first findings conclude that this age group is concerned more about food safety in restaurants and other public areas but not as concerned about food safety in the home. "This age group is confident in handling at home because of their experience, but they should be more concerned about in-home safety," Boone said.

Eating runny egg yokes is an example of a bad practice that is commonly done in the home. This is not a safe procedure for anyone, but the 65-and-older age group is not that concerned with it.

"They believe they have lead a rich life and by this time, they don't care about small things like that, but they can be at risk for foodborne illness.

"If an older person were to get sick, the sickness would keep them down for a long time or weaken them, making another illness worse," she said. "This would make their life not as rich as they say."

Homemaker Janet Erbe, a former cook for a school district near Neodesha, is one of those people. "I do use two different cutting boards, but I also like soft eggs. I am very concerned with my health, but there are some things I take my chances with," she said.

Another finding from the research is that another age group might need to be targeted in order to be the most effective when dealing with education and changing behaviors. With older generations, they have been taught how to cook and handle food. Younger generations will be more uneducated about food safety because they have not been taught about cooking and do not cook regularly.

"Younger generations are not cooking or handling food. They also aren't being taught by their parents or grandparents," Boone said.

After this research project is done, Boone and Gordon would probably do some of the same research with a younger crowd to see how safely they handle food and what can be done to change their behaviors.

Erbe said, "My daughter just got married recently, and I hope that she has learned from me how to handle food properly so it will be safe.

"She has a baby on the way; so she needs to be extra careful."

The biggest goal of this research project is "to create and test messages and make the messages more effective," Boone said.

The research project consists of three phases.

During the first phase of the project, a national telephone survey asked people 65-and-older their ideas about safe food handling. After the survey, eight focus groups were organized across the state in order to study how older Americans handle their food. Groups also discussed how to educate the older population about changing their behaviors concerning improper food safety procedures and evaluate current USDA materials.

The second phase of the project consists of positioning educational materials about proper food safety procedures and then doing experiments to test how effective the material and introduction of it is.

The final phase of the project will involve "tweaking the material and creating a curriculum to be taught in the College of Human Ecology," Boone said.

Funding for the research comes from a $434,000 USDA-CSREES Integrated Food Safety grant.

John Raacke, a KSU graduate student in psychology, was hired as a project coordinator. His job is to keep the project on task, track budget, keep all the group members up-to-date and to do the miscellaneous paperwork.

When this research project comes to a close, the research team hopes to improve food safety materials targeted at adults 65-and-over.

Changing attitudes will be the hardest part of the project but the group is up for the challenge. "After all, that's what research is for," Boone said.

Written by Audrey Vail
HOMETOWN: Neodesha, Kansas

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