Food handlers’ level of knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) towards Repeated Heated Cooking Oil (RHCO) in Shah Alam / Amanina Abd Rahman @ Ragam

Repeated Heated Cooking Oil (RHCO) associated with critical diseases include cancer due to its carcinogenic effect. However, despite the bad health impact, the usage of RHCO are found to be a common practice among food handlers for several reason. Hence, this study was initiated to investigate the level of knowledge, attitude and practice of food handlers on the usage of RHCO. A total of 130 food court's food handlers in Shah Alam area participated in this quantitative survey. A set of questionnaire that consist of Section A (demographic profile), B (knowledge), C (attitude) and D (practice) of RHCO were distributed between March - June 2021. The data collected undergone frequency, descriptive and correlational analysis using SPSS version 28. In addition, in-use cooking oil are collected to be tested so that the qualities of the cooking oil were identified cooking oil samples were simultaneously collected from 50 selected food premises to identify their qualities based on total polar compound (TPC) and acid value (AV) using rapid kits, Testo 270 and LRSM respectively. Through the questionnaire on KAP, the research results showed that the majority (60.8%) of food court food handlers had moderate level of knowledge, 53.8% had poor levels of attitude and 49.2% had moderate level of practice of RHCO usage. This study also found no significant relationship between the KAP variables. The results from 50 selected in-use cooking oil samples collected tested using TPC and AV tests found that all the cooking oils were 9.0% to 22.5% and 1.33 ± 0 to 2.73 ± 0, respectively. Which shows that fried food of food courts were found to be generally safe to be consumed. To conclude, better monitoring and enforcement of clearer RHCO guidelines needs to be implemented by the governmental food authorities to address the issue on RHCO and to ensure fried foods sold at food.