Food safety knowledge, attitudes, and eating behavior in the advent of the global coronavirus pandemic

PLoS One. 2021 Dec 31;16(12):e0261832. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0261832. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationships of food safety knowledge, attitude and eating behavior of consumers during national lockdowns in the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 157 respondents completed the online survey using a structured questionnaire worldwide. Overall, the respondents exhibited good attitude and good knowledge towards public health including food safety especially on the importance of social distancing, mask wearing, well-balanced diet, physical exercise and personal hygiene, such as hand washing during the pandemic lockdowns. A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to test the relationships among food safety knowledge, attitude and behavior under the pandemic conditions. Results showed that attitude towards food safety under the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns positively affected the eating behavior of the respondents, which exhibited a high β (0.686) among the variables tested (p<0.05). Food safety knowledge was apparently not affected by the food safety behavior of the respondents.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Aged
  • COVID-19 / epidemiology*
  • Feeding Behavior / psychology*
  • Female
  • Food Safety*
  • Global Health
  • Hand Disinfection
  • Health Behavior
  • Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Pandemics*
  • Pilot Projects
  • Public Health
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

The authors wish to acknowledge the funding from Henan Association for Science and Technology (HNKJZK-2021-12B) for the research upon which this paper is based. Also, this study was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (21BGL052), Humanities and Social Science Project of Education Department of Henan Province (2021-ZZJH-082) and Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities of Henan Province (2017-JD-02). The authors would like to thank all the respondents for their feedback and support during collection of the data.