Street Food Quality in Dhaka City

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Primary data analysis

I conducted the survey randomly on 43 people & among them both are male and female. I have asked them about 10 specific questions which is important & relevant to my research topic. I didn’t include any sort of questions which is offended to them. My purpose of this research is to understand the people’s perception about street food in Dhaka city. This answers will help me to write a better & precise research paper as well as to reach a conclusion of my decision on this research. Here I am going to discuss about my findings, please have a look:

Q1: what is your gender?

I have conducted survey on 43 people at NSU & BASHUNDHARA R/A. Among them 31 is male & remaining are female respondents.

Q2: what is your occupation?

For this research, my target group was corporate employees, businessmen, and students. But for the limited time & resources, I have to conduct the survey only on the students of NSU & who lives in BASHAUNDHARA R/A. here 40 respondents are students. That means about 97.6% are students.

Q3: how often do you eat street food?

Here about 54.8% people said they occasionally eat street food in Dhaka city. Other 21.4% said everyday & remaining 23.8% said rarely. In my hypothesis, I expected more than 50% of people eat street food in a regular basis. There is contradict with my hypothesis, this was because of the small sample size. Only about 21.4% people eat street food in Dhaka city in a regular basis.

Q4: why do you eat street food?

Here about 34.1% people prefer street food because it is tasty. About 26.8% people think street food is convenient & ready to serve. 24.4% people stated that they eat street food because it is cheap. And remaining 14.6% people think street food is less time consuming than other traditional restaurants. The results of the survey in some extent match with my hypotheses. People eat street food in Dhaka city because of the convenient & the cheap rate.

Q5: How do you feel about street food?

In this question, about 37.2% people chose that street food ‘serves their hunger’. About 30.2% people chose the option ‘street food is appealing’. About 16.3% people chose street food ‘makes their life easier’. And remaining 16.3% people chose the ‘option none of the above’. My purpose of this question is to find out peoples actual feeling & why they eat street food as in a regular basis.

Q6: what do you think about the quality of street food in Dhaka city?

In this question about 53.7% people chose the option moderate. About 41.5% people think street food as unhygienic. And remaining 4.9% people think quality of the street food in Dhaka city is bad. I wanted to know what extent people conscious about the quality of the street food in Dhaka city.

Q7: Did you ever get sick because of street food?

In this question about 63.4% people said yes, they got sick after taking street food. Remaining 36.6% people said they didn’t. This result indeed support my hypothesis. The quality factor is the main issue in my research. This sickness occurs due to some deregulation of health safety measures. Here I suggested some possible solutions which can prevent this quality issue problem.

Q8: If yes, what types of diseases you encountered?

In this question about 60.7% people stated they had food poisoning after having street food. About 25% people said they stomach ache and remaining 14.3% people said they had diarrhea because of street food consumption in Dhaka city.

Q9: What steps public health department should take to ensure the street food quality in Dhaka city?

Through this question I wanted to know what people’s perception of what steps public health department should take to main the quality of the street food in Dhaka city. About 66.7% people think that ‘time to time quality check’ would be good option to maintain the quality of the street food. About 35.7% think that by ‘enforcing fine’ could be another good option to control the quality of the food. About 31% people think that ‘providing standardization certificate’ to do street food business is a good choice. Remaining 28.6% people chose the option implementation of law.

Secondary data analysis

Because of the globalization street food has become more popular nowadays. We have different street food in our culture. So, the risk of having different diseases at the same time increases. This is one of the concerns for the public health department as well as the government.

“With the increasing pace of globalization and tourism, the safety of street food has become one of the major concerns of public health department and a focus for governments and scientists to raise public awareness.”(Street food, 2007)

“In the United Kingdom, the food standard agency provides comprehensive guidance of food safety for the vendors, traders and retailers of the street food sector”. (Street food, 2007) Like UK, our government also should provide proper guidance of food safety for the vendors in the street food sectors. They should introduce new laws for street food.

Due to regularly having street food may cause gastrointestinal infection which lead to diarrhea & other diseases. According to Kathy Gleason (2015) “You may be exposed to the germs that causes gastrointestinal infections by eating street food. This type of infection causes diarrhea or vomiting.”

It is difficult to control street food quality in Dhaka city. However government and public health department should take this matter seriously. According to Sharmila Rane (2011)“Street foods are perceived to be a major public health risk due to lack of basic infrastructure and services, difficulty in controlling the large numbers of street food vending operations because of their diversity, mobility and temporary nature.”

Recently Bangladesh introduce some laws & department to reduce the harmful substance in street food & other restaurants. They inspect the quality & hygiene factors of the food to maintain the standard. They also fines any vendors who did not keep the safety standard. According to Md. Khairuzzaman (2014) “A mobile court to monitor street food vendors was introduced