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Exploring customers’ perceptions of food adulteration at bazaars and supermarkets in Dhaka, Bangladesh; a qualitative exploration

BACKGROUND: Food adulteration is an increasingly recognized global public health problem. In low- and middle-income countries like Bangladesh, adulteration is difficult to detect and respond to. We explored customers’ perceptions on food adulteration, perception of risk and connections between infor...

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Autores principales: Yeasmin, Dalia, Baker, Musa, Kamal, Abu-Hena Mostofa, Islam, Md Saiful, Rahman, Mahbubur, Winch, Peter J., Unicomb, Leanne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9887844/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36721115
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14933-9
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author Yeasmin, Dalia
Baker, Musa
Kamal, Abu-Hena Mostofa
Islam, Md Saiful
Rahman, Mahbubur
Winch, Peter J.
Unicomb, Leanne
author_facet Yeasmin, Dalia
Baker, Musa
Kamal, Abu-Hena Mostofa
Islam, Md Saiful
Rahman, Mahbubur
Winch, Peter J.
Unicomb, Leanne
author_sort Yeasmin, Dalia
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Food adulteration is an increasingly recognized global public health problem. In low- and middle-income countries like Bangladesh, adulteration is difficult to detect and respond to. We explored customers’ perceptions on food adulteration, perception of risk and connections between information, participant characteristics and patterns of adulterated food concerns that impact risk perception in urban Bangladesh. METHODS: A formative study was conducted in Dhaka, between June and August 2015 at a supermarket and a wet market. We explored community awareness and response to chemical contaminants (adulterants) among participants from a range of socio-economic backgrounds. The team conducted 38 in-depth interviews with 12 customers and 4 staff from a supermarket, and 12 customers and 10 vendors from a wet market. Participants were selected purposively. Audio recorded data were coded based on thematic content and analyzed manually. RESULTS: We asked participants how common foods were likely adulterated, and most gave figures of 70% or more. They reported that foods were adulterated with chemicals or artificial colors, especially fish, milk, and vegetables. The supermarket more commonly sold packaged foods with nutritional and expiry information on the label; and offered convenience in terms of building size, layout, and cleanliness. All customers from the wet market thought that foods were cheaper and fresher than from supermarkets. Supermarket customers expressed greater concern about adulterated foods than wet market customers. Most participants from both markets reported that food adulteration is invisible, adulterated foods cannot be avoided, and have long-term negative health impacts including cancer, diabetes, paralysis, heart attack, and others. Nearly half of customers from both markets were concerned about the poor nutritional value of adulterated food. Participants from both settings expressed the need for access to credible information about adulteration to help choose safe foods. The majority expressed the need for government action against those who are responsible for adulteration. CONCLUSIONS: Food adulteration was considered a major health threat. The government could act on food adulteration prevention if provided credible population-based data on disease burden, a model food sampling and testing protocol, a model for inspections, organizational strengthening and training, example social and behavioral change communications with estimated costs.
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spelling pubmed-98878442023-02-01 Exploring customers’ perceptions of food adulteration at bazaars and supermarkets in Dhaka, Bangladesh; a qualitative exploration Yeasmin, Dalia Baker, Musa Kamal, Abu-Hena Mostofa Islam, Md Saiful Rahman, Mahbubur Winch, Peter J. Unicomb, Leanne BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: Food adulteration is an increasingly recognized global public health problem. In low- and middle-income countries like Bangladesh, adulteration is difficult to detect and respond to. We explored customers’ perceptions on food adulteration, perception of risk and connections between information, participant characteristics and patterns of adulterated food concerns that impact risk perception in urban Bangladesh. METHODS: A formative study was conducted in Dhaka, between June and August 2015 at a supermarket and a wet market. We explored community awareness and response to chemical contaminants (adulterants) among participants from a range of socio-economic backgrounds. The team conducted 38 in-depth interviews with 12 customers and 4 staff from a supermarket, and 12 customers and 10 vendors from a wet market. Participants were selected purposively. Audio recorded data were coded based on thematic content and analyzed manually. RESULTS: We asked participants how common foods were likely adulterated, and most gave figures of 70% or more. They reported that foods were adulterated with chemicals or artificial colors, especially fish, milk, and vegetables. The supermarket more commonly sold packaged foods with nutritional and expiry information on the label; and offered convenience in terms of building size, layout, and cleanliness. All customers from the wet market thought that foods were cheaper and fresher than from supermarkets. Supermarket customers expressed greater concern about adulterated foods than wet market customers. Most participants from both markets reported that food adulteration is invisible, adulterated foods cannot be avoided, and have long-term negative health impacts including cancer, diabetes, paralysis, heart attack, and others. Nearly half of customers from both markets were concerned about the poor nutritional value of adulterated food. Participants from both settings expressed the need for access to credible information about adulteration to help choose safe foods. The majority expressed the need for government action against those who are responsible for adulteration. CONCLUSIONS: Food adulteration was considered a major health threat. The government could act on food adulteration prevention if provided credible population-based data on disease burden, a model food sampling and testing protocol, a model for inspections, organizational strengthening and training, example social and behavioral change communications with estimated costs. BioMed Central 2023-01-31 /pmc/articles/PMC9887844/ /pubmed/36721115 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14933-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Yeasmin, Dalia
Baker, Musa
Kamal, Abu-Hena Mostofa
Islam, Md Saiful
Rahman, Mahbubur
Winch, Peter J.
Unicomb, Leanne
Exploring customers’ perceptions of food adulteration at bazaars and supermarkets in Dhaka, Bangladesh; a qualitative exploration
title Exploring customers’ perceptions of food adulteration at bazaars and supermarkets in Dhaka, Bangladesh; a qualitative exploration
title_full Exploring customers’ perceptions of food adulteration at bazaars and supermarkets in Dhaka, Bangladesh; a qualitative exploration
title_fullStr Exploring customers’ perceptions of food adulteration at bazaars and supermarkets in Dhaka, Bangladesh; a qualitative exploration
title_full_unstemmed Exploring customers’ perceptions of food adulteration at bazaars and supermarkets in Dhaka, Bangladesh; a qualitative exploration
title_short Exploring customers’ perceptions of food adulteration at bazaars and supermarkets in Dhaka, Bangladesh; a qualitative exploration
title_sort exploring customers’ perceptions of food adulteration at bazaars and supermarkets in dhaka, bangladesh; a qualitative exploration
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9887844/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36721115
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14933-9
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