Consumers often depend on public institutions to provide safe and healthy food. Thus, trust in these institutions becomes an important consideration for food consumption. The objective was to examine the relationship between consumer trust in relevant government institutions and consumer perception and concern about fast food safety and healthiness. A quantitative approach was used to conduct a cross-sectional consumer survey in 20 fast-food restaurants in Accra, Ghana. Trust was measured by three components (competence, care, and openness). The competence (β = 0.234, p < .05) and openness (β = 0.238, p < .05) components of trust were significant predictors of consumer perception of safety of fast food. Care component of trust was not significant in influencing any of the dependent variables; however, this component positively associated with the competence and openness components implying that when institutions exhibit competence and honesty they are likely to be perceived as being caring about consumers' concerns. To conclude, relevant institutions need to be more competent, open, and caring to protect consumer health and minimise their concerns about fast-food safety and healthiness. These institutions need to build and maintain consumer trust and ensure that restaurateurs comply with food safety and health guidelines.

Handwashing has been recognized as a convenient, effective, and cost-effective means of preventing communicable diseases. However, many people overlook the importance of handwashing when engaging in activities that require handwashing due to various factors. The objectives of this study were to assess the level of handwashing knowledge, attitudes, and practices and determine their relationships and how they are affected by sex, educational background, and age. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 636 respondents who received and completed an online questionnaire that was disseminated to the contacts of the researchers via WhatsApp, Email, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Respondents were presented with several statements to assess their handwashing knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Overall, 82.2% of respondents had good knowledge, 91% had a positive attitude, and 48.4% adhered to good handwashing practices. Having a high school level of education (OR = 0.193, p = 0.034.), (OR = 0.145, p = 0.000) and (OR = 0.448, p = 0.049) decreased the likelihood of having good knowledge, positive attitudes, and good practices than in persons with tertiary level education. Predictors of good handwashing practices were knowledge (OR = 1.059, p = 0.37) and attitude (OR = 1.095, p = 0.000). These results suggest that having a higher level of education could increase a person's knowledge and attitude, which in turn enhances the likelihood that the person would adhere to most handwashing and hand hygiene practices. Enhancing people's handwashing practices requires positive attitudes and good knowledge about handwashing. These need to be complemented by enhanced access to handwashing facilities and innovative measures to enforce and encourage compliance.

Biofortification is an approach used to increase micronutrient content of crops through agronomic practices, conventional or modern biotechnology. Through a plethora of projects, partnerships were formed to advocate for policy changes, and increased investments in research, production and utilisation of biofortified crops. One of such projects is the Building Nutritious Food Baskets project, which has been appraised in order to draw and share successes, challenges and lessons for the improvement of similar future projects to achieve substantial impacts. The paper provides an overview of the role of biofortification in addressing nutritional challenges and highlights the efficacy of biofortified crops in improving micronutrient status. Through advocacy at the African Regional and sub-regional levels, awareness has been created on biofortification among governments, investors, development partners, farmers and consumers. This awareness has resulted in the incorporation of biofortification in some key policies, strategies and investment programmes. Key lessons learnt from regional advocacy are (1) in order to integrate biofortification in regional policies, strategies and programmes, it is important to identify champions from key and strategic regional organisations as they provide information on potential opportunities for influencing policies, (2) having a common advocacy message helps to highlight the role of biofortification in contributing to the prevention of micronutrient problems as well as evidence of impact on nutrition outcome, (3) champions need to be allocated a budget to support their advocacy work and (4) to engender adoption of biofortification, it is important to align biofortification with relevant initiatives as well as ongoing opportunities for advocacy.