HOME FOOD SAFETY PRACTICE AND HOUSEHOLD FOOD INSECURITY: A STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING APPROACH

Background and Aim: Food safety and food security are interrelated concepts with a profound impact on the quality of human life. Therefore, the current study, for the first time, was set to identify associations between home food safety practice and household food insecurity by a structural equation modeling approach.Methods: Methods: In this cross-sectional study, urban households were selected from among 10 health centers of five districts of Tehran, Iran. The questionnaires were completed by interviewing in order to obtain the following information: Socio-Economic Status (SES), food security and food safety. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied for predicting the relationships between SES, food insecurity, and food safety in the households.Results: Food security was observed in 56% of the households. Mild, moderate and severe food insecure households were determined to be 29, 12, and 3%, respectively. Also the scores of home food safety practice in 37.5, 33 and 29.5% of the households were classified as desirable, acceptable and weak, respectively. Low-educated mothers having husbands with low educational and occupational level had a weaker food safety practice compared to high educated ones. Mothers from food insecure households had weaker food safety practice than food secure ones. Based on the SEM results, an inverse association between food safety practice and food insecurity score was observed (t= -2.89, ɣ= 0.16). Conclusion: Food insecurity and undesirable food safety practice were relatively prevalent among the households. . In addition, the economic and social factors could significantly and inversely affect both food insecurity and food safety practices.

کلیدواژه ها:

Household food insecurity ، Home food safety practice ، Structural Equation Modeling ، HFIAS questionnaire