Food-Related Health Emergency-Disaster Risk Reduction in Rural Ethnic Minority Communities: A Pilot Study of Knowledge, Awareness and Practice of Food Labelling and Salt-intake Reduction in a Kunge Community in China

Abstract

Food safety and unhealthy dietary pattern are important global health problems. Understanding food-related health needs and providing corresponding support are important to health risk reduction. A needs assessment, education intervention for food labelling, and another intervention for salt-intake reduction were conducted in a rural Kunge community in Yunnan, China in 2014, 2015 and 2016, respectively. Not checking the expiry date of packaged food (37.1%) and a high salt diet (53.9%) were the most common problems in the community. Both topics were selected for education intervention. Pre- and post-intervention questionnaires were used to evaluate the effectiveness. Education interventions were found effective in improving food-health-related knowledge, changing attitudes toward behaviors such as willingness to read food labels before buying and consuming packaged food. However, no significant improvements were found for the attitudes toward not consuming expired food, controlling salt-intake, and decreasing the consumption of cured food. Health education was shown to be effective in promoting food-health-related knowledge but was limited in changing relevant behaviors in a rural ethnic minority community.

Keywords: Health-EDRM; education intervention; ethnic minority; food label; food safety; food-related health; risk reduction; rural; salt.