A Study on Eating Habit and Behavior in Accordance with the Stress Level of the Elementary School Students

초등학생의 스트레스 정도에 따른 식습관 및 식행동에 관한 연구 -서울시내 강북지역 5, 6학년을 대상으로-

This study was aimed for examining the changes of eating habit and behavior according to the degree of stress of elementary school students. It was tried to identify their daily stress levels and their relevances with the changes of their eating habits and behaviosr. The subjects were 500 students from fifth and sixth grades in three elementary schools in Seoul. The students surveyed showed to get moderately stressed in general. The stress level of girls were higher than that of boys(p<0.001) in the individual area. The breakfast ratio of the low stressed group(LS) marked higher(p<0.001) than those of both the middle-(MS) and highly-stressed group(HS). In other words, the LS group had regular breakfast. The main reason why they were skipping breakfast was lack of time. The amount of a meal in the HS group was noticeably bigger than the other two groups(p<0.05) and the amount of salt and spices used was higher(p<0.01). The amount of food taken when they got stressed was increased remarkably higher in the HS group and students in that group had snacks as the way of relieving the stress. The HS group displayed higher ratio of the unbalanced diet habit. There were noticeable differences in the eating habit and behavior, i.e. the amount of meals, of salt used and whether eating breakfast or not, in accordance of the levels of stress.