Food safety knowledge and changes in practices and concerns of Indian families during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose>Unsafe food can lead to various foodborne diseases and even death, especially among children. This paper aims to assess food safety knowledge and changes in practices and concerns among adults ≥ 18 years during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.Design/methodology/approach>A cross-sectional, web-based survey was conducted among 325 adults living in Northern India. Demographic data and information regarding their knowledge, practices and concerns about various food safety issues were collected to see if there were any changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Findings>The results showed that the participants had slightly higher than average knowledge and good food safety practices with mean scores of 9.75 ± 2.23 and 24.87 ± 2.28, respectively. Contracting COVID-19 from food and food packaging materials was of high concern for more than 70% of the participants. Majority (> 80%) of them reported an increase in the frequency of handwashing. About 16% of the participants used chemical disinfectants for washing fruits and vegetables. An increase (57.5%) in the frequency of food label reading was also noted during the pandemic. Freshness and the general quality of food items (49.5%), safety of food (30.8%) and cost (18.2%) were the top drivers that influenced the purchase decision.Originality/value>This study highlighted the need to send out clear messages on safe food handling practices and keeping the tempo up for sustaining good hygienic practices. This will help in reducing the risk of foodborne diseases.

Nonimaging Optics and Constructal Design Towards Optimal Solar Cookers

According to the WHO nowadays all over the world millions of people get sick and die each year from inhaling the fumes produced by the combustion of wood and other fuels for cooking, causing much more deaths than the those due to COVID-19! These deaths and illnesses can be significantly reduced by using very efficient, reliable, safe and economical solar cookers with which any type of food could be cooked most of the days of the year. Even thought there are today lots of succesfull designs of solar cookers, we still need such optimised designs that could operate even in frankly cloudy days;the solar cookers presented here meet these strict requirements. Globally, cooking food involves a significant and unavoidable consumption of energy cause more than 7.8 billion people must eat at least three times a day and this cooking is done mostly by burning fossil fuels or firewood, generating a large amount of toxic and greenhouse gases and particles that are very harmful to health and the environment. The massive use of solar cookers would have great benefits, but to guarantee their use for at least 85% of the days of each year it is necessary to have very high-performance solar cookers, keeping ease use and reasonably low manufacturing costs. The use of Nonimaging Optics and the Constructal Design have made possible to create solar cookers with which them is possible to cook any food on almost any day of the year. Details of their design and some operational results are sumarised here. © 2021. The Authors.

Is Buying Local Food a Sustainable Practice? A Scoping Review of Consumers’ Preference for Local Food

Access to healthy food and the introduction of sustainable nutrition practices are two important issues today. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new challenges to food security but it has also provided opportunities for local food production. The discussion on local food has been gaining attention in recent years, but there is still a lack of clear understanding of the term ‘local food’ in the literature. The relationship between local food and sustainability issues is still unclear and has various connotations. This discordance leads to further discussions on whether buying local food should be considered a sustainable behavior and whether consumer preference for local food can be perceived as a sustainable practice. A scoping literature review was conducted in order to fill this gap and to shed light on the main tendencies of the scientific literature regarding this topic. The outcomes of the research revealed three dimensions of ‘local food’ definitions in the literature: geographical, geopolitical, and organic;while the problem of a unified local food definition remains open. The studied literature did not show any sound evidence for sustainability attributes in the definition of local food and consumer perception of local food.