User experiences with food storage in a meatsafe (mesh-covered food storage cabinet) in an informal settlement in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Musarrat Jabeen Rahman, Syeda Nurunnahar, Mahbubur Rahman, Laura H. Kwong, Peter J. Winch · 2026
Read User experiences with food storage in a meatsafe (mesh-covered food storage cabinet) in an informal settlement in Dhaka, Bangladesh by Musarrat Jabeen Rahman, Syeda Nurunnahar, Mahbubur Rahman, Laura H. Kwong, Peter J. Winch (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13540818.txt.
Description
Rahman and colleagues investigate a public health puzzle: a device that failed. A mesh-walled meatsafe, a ventilated cabinet that keeps flies, animals, and toddlers off cooked food, was handed out across Korail, an informal settlement in Dhaka, inside a randomised trial. Spot checks found nearly every household using it across five rounds, yet food contamination and child diarrhoea did not budge. Their 2026 qualitative substudy interviewed sixteen caregivers and read the transcripts through a behaviour-change framework.
Two barrier families emerged. Inside the intervention's control, a belief that trapped steam spoils food led caregivers to cool dishes uncovered before shelving them. Warped liners, wobbly frames, weak latches, and tight size all added friction that delayed safe storage. The authors caution that perfect use might still have failed, since the cabinet's basic efficacy was never proven under Korail's contamination load.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Musarrat Jabeen Rahman, Syeda Nurunnahar, Mahbubur Rahman, Laura H. Kwong, Peter J. Winch |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 55 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |