Assessment of level Awareness of Libyan Consumer Towards ‎Food Additives in Canned Foods and Their Health Effects A study ‎of a Sample of Consumers in the City of Nalut, Libya

Abstract

The study aimed to assess the level of awareness of Libyan consumer towards food additives in canned food and their health effects, as well as the demographic factors affecting it. A representative sample of consumers in the city of Nalut, libya was used for this purpose. The study adopted the descriptive analytical approach to the data. A closed questionnaire was designed to obtain demographic and required data and was distributed to a random sample of 130     consumers in the city of Nalut Results showed that the level of public awareness was moderate, with a weighted arithmetic mean of 2.13, with a percentage of 70.92%, and they also indicated that 68.30% of the respondents did not have any information about additives in canned food. Moreover, 64.40% of the respondents have trouble understanding and interpreting the information on packaged food labels. Besides, that only 14.90% of the study sample were aware of the health risks caused by excessive consumption of foods containing chemical additives at high levels and their possibility of becoming carcinogenic. Furthermore, 56.33% did not realize that excessive consumption of industrial food additives on a continuous basis is directly related to some diseases prevalent in Libyan society, such as kidney cancer, thyroid, lymphomas and brain tumours. The Results of the statistical analysis also showed significant differences at the level of significance (P≤ 0.05) on the level of awareness of the study sample towards food additives and their health effects. Results also represented the existence of a positive direct relationship between each of the independent variables (gender, age, educational level, occupation) and level of awareness of the study sample, where the highest value of Spearman’s correlation coefficient reached (0.442), which is a statistically significant value at (p≤0.01) level.