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

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 helpin...