Table 4.

Food safety within the neighbourhood food environment.

Sub-theme 1: Food hygiene
Accra	‘She covers her food with clean materials to prevent flies. Also, when she is not selling, she tries to always clean the surrounding and the utensils. Because of that I always like to buy food at her shop so I don't get stomach problems.’ [Female, 32 years, low to middle SES, Accra, A34]
Ho	‘The place they cook the food before bringing it here, is a very neat place and the food they cook is very good. Everything that they cook and whatever they use to cook is cleaned well … those at the road side … they don't care the things they use to prepare the food. The food and how they wash the things they use to cook … They don't wash them well and it is not healthy to eat from there … ’ [Female, 38 years, low to middle SES, H27]
Nairobi	‘she makes sure that she has washed them for you in clean water as you watch, then she cuts for you and you leave so for me it's about cleanliness if you see me going somewhere it's because of cleanliness. Even if a place the person is dirty you would not like to go maybe you took something bad started to diarrhoea because of dirt so how will you approach that person since he is dirty himself (laughter)’ [Male, 52 years, lowest SES, N39]
Sub-theme 2: Environmental sanitation
Accra	‘ … the place is not neat [clean] and for me even if the people here cook and offer me some of the food to eat, I will not eat it …. if you cook in a place like this and sell, I will not buy food from you to eat … there are dirty rags on the ground and the place is littered with plastic rubbers … ’ [Female, 24 years, lowest SES, Accra, A38]
Ho	‘They keep that place very well. They sell by a gutter but, when they come, they clean the gutter very well before they sell. They have glass covering all their food. And the place they give you to sit if you are eating the food there, is very neat, there is soap, to use in washing your hands. When you eat, you enjoy it, even if the food is not so nice at times, you will enjoy it because of how the place is kept. How the place is neat, makes me want to eat over there.’ [Female, 19 years, lowest SES, H4]
Nairobi	‘ … the dust goes everywhere on the foods they cook out there. Even when you go now you will get many women there some cooking chips, others things for children bhajia but it is an open place … I don't have time to cook mandazi, chapatti it is a big process and I also go to work those ones with dirt are the same ones that I buy. I ask for five mandazis, 2 chapattis if she is not around I take 4 mandazis. I came here in the 70s, and I have eaten so it is God who protects us … ’ [Male72 years, low to middle SES, N26]
Sub-theme 3: Food adulteration and contamination
Accra	‘These instant noodles that we buy almost every evening they add all sort of artificial spices to it, the sausage and all those things are not good for our body but we cannot afford the fish. We have no choice than to eat the instant noodles and sausage.’ [Female, 38 years, lowest SES, A40]
Ho	‘There are times when they are mixing the dough, they keep talking and saliva will get into it. And also when you eat the kenkey you can see pieces of chewing sticks in it, because they will be chewing the stick and be working, and when it gets in the dough, they just wrap the kenkey.’ [Female, 13years, low to middle SES, H28]
Nairobi	‘Go to buy from the normal cereals (shops) from which you buy in a paper, they normally put chemicals so that it doesn't spoil quickly and stay for long in the cereal (shop). So this one is good because in supermarket people come to shop like every day and so they don't need to put such things.’ [Male, 14 years, low to middle SES, N31]
Nairobi	‘You know some people we say they put in ‘blue band’ (a brand of margarine that some vendors add to milk, together with water or other harmful chemicals such as formalin, to preserve the milk, increase its volume and make more profit), but this one is from the cow direct … ’ [Female, 55 years, lowest SES, Nairobi, N18]
Sub-theme 4: Regulations
Accra	‘I wish the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) authorities will come and inspect where people prepare food before giving them the license to cook. In Jamestown, anyone wakes up and start to sell kenkey. Interestingly, the leaves they use to bag the kenkey is not well stored and washed. They just lie on the floor and collects dust and that could cause people to fall sick. People don't wash their hands when preparing kenkey.’ [Female, 19 years, lowest SES, A35]
Nairobi	‘So it is good if the government knows especially in urban areas, in the rural areas there are no such problems, people cook but in the urban areas people need to be told to avoid some foods like the ones in cans so people should eat foods that are fresh because the preservatives are the ones that are bringing problems to the body since our body was not made for preservatives, so when the preservatives get to the body there is no protection for those preservatives those are poisons we add to the body that bring cancers those funny disease's’ [Male, 52 years, low to middle SES, N39]