STREET FOOD: UNDERSTANDING TO INTERVENE

Abstract

Street food is a worldwide phenomenon of great cultural, economic and nutritional importance, however, the precarious conditions of commercialization of food constitute a high risk of disease acquisition. In the present study, by means of an integrative review, the scientific production of the last ten years on the topic was analyzed, with the objective of knowing the socioeconomic profile of street vendors and the hygienic-sanitary conditions of foods commercialized on the streets of the main brazilian cities. The final sample of this research consisted of ten original articles whose results characterized the brazilian street food as precarious in relation to the hygiene of utensils, equipment and places where the street vendors were installed, a situation aggravated by the lack of hygiene of the hands of the sellers, who handle money and food simultaneously. The microbiological analysis on food, countertops and the hands of the vendors detected quantities of microorganisms above what is allowed by the legislation, corroborating the research carried out through in loco observations. It was noticed in the analysis of these articles that the lack of standardization of the data collected in these studies is detrimental to the extrapolation of the results. Thus, in this article, a data collection instrument was proposed that will allow obtaining standardized information about the sector.