Evaluation of hygienic quality of fresh juices serving in restaurants and cafes in Alexandria City

Abstract EN

The need for cool drinks is unavoidable but for more social occasion, fresh fruit juices are often the beverages of first choice.

Most restaurants, cafés and even road-side Stalls have on-site facilities for extracting the juice from fresh fruits like oranges, mangoes and any other fruits that may be available, and then serving to their thirsty customers.

Among all beverage, fruit juices have the highest acceptability among men and women of all ages all over the world.

There are reports of food borne illnesses associated with the consumption of fruit juices at several places.

In view of their ready consumption, quick methods of cleaning utensils, handling and extraction, they could often prove to be a public health threat.

So, the aim of this study is to evaluate hygienic quality of fresh juices serving in restaurants and cafes, and the food safety knowledge of juice handlers.

A sample composed of 17 restaurants ,18 of cafes and 118 juice handlers) from both restaurants and cafes were selected in Alexandria city.

Data were collected via two questionnaires, the first questionnaire was addressed to restaurants and cafes manager, the second questionnaire was distributed in selected restaurants and cafes to juice handlers.

The duration of this study was from July 2015 to January2016, for almost six months .Our results demonstrate the storage condition of the raw and of the prepared juice, the total score percentage of the restaurants was 82.4 % and 66.7 % in cafes.

There was good level of knowledge by juice food handlers.

This study recommended that the HACCP system should be applied in all restaurants and cafes and the presence of a national specification sets for fresh juices which should be prepared in order to interpret the result at national level.