• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
• /
• v.27 no.3
• /
• pp.19-34
• /
• 2015

Current study aimed to evaluate elementary school children's perception and eating attitude towards vegetables and analyze environmental factors influencing it. Survey was conducted among elementary school students and their parents in Gangwon district, 410 subjects each(Total 742, 391 students, 351 parents). The results are as follows. Both the children(64.3%) and the parents(84.9%) showed high concern over health. 46.6% of children and 52.4% of parents admitted unbalanced eating behavior, and commonly avoided foods were mostly vegetables such as mushroom, carrot, garlic, sweet pepper-green, welsh onion, kimchi, pumpkin, or beans. Unbalanced eating habit was significantly related to health consideration in choosing what to eat(p<0.01) and interest in health(p<0.05). 70.9% of children with unbalanced eating habit showed intention for correction, and those with high interest in health had stronger intention (p<0.01). Regarding children's perception of 20 kinds of vegetables frequently used in school lunch, swiss chard leaf beet, amaranthus magistratus, and curled mallow were rarely heard of or hardly eaten before. Korean chinese cabbage, radish(62.7%), cucumber(62.1%), perilla leaves(60.4%), lettuce(58.1%), and spinach(54.5%) were among the most frequently eaten. Survey result on children's preference for the vegetables shows lettuce, cucumber, Korean chinese cabbage, perilla leaves, spinach, and radish were highly preferred and stem of garlic, crown daisy, sweet pepper-green, pepper, and curled mallow were the least preferred. There was a significant positive correlation(p<0.01, p<0.001) between children's and their parent's preference for each vegetables, implying that children's preference towards vegetables is greatly influenced by their parent's choice. Children showed negative attitude towards vegetables with strong flavor and tended to avoid vegetables that they remember as not tasty. This suggest that strong flavor and negative prior experience is what determines children's attitude in vegetable consumption. Many children said they try to eat vegetables even if they haven't had it before, and this tendency was significantly correlated with the degree of interest in health(p<0.05) and the degree of consideration of health in choosing what to eat(p<0.001).

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
• /
• v.30 no.4
• /
• pp.434-441
• /
• 1997

Fat consumption has decreased since the 1950's in the United States, and coronary heart disease mortality rates have gradually declined as well. These changes might be associated with changes of attitudes due to increased information about the relationship between fat consumption and hear disease. The purpose of this study was to determine whether knowledge and attitudes concerning fat and foods high or low in fat had an impact on peoples' actual fat consumption. for this study, the data of fat consumption and knowledge/attitudes of people came from the 1989-1991 Continuing Survey of food Intakes by Individuals/Diet and Health Knowledge Survey (CSFII/DHKS), conducted by USDA. It was found that women 65 years ed older tried to avoid more fat and consume more vegetables than those aged 25-64 years ; in fact, the actual fit consumption of those over 65 years was lowest among all age categories. However, the elderly did not have as much nutrition knowledge as people aged 25-64 years. Attitudes concerning vegetables and health were a better predictor of fat consumption than those concerning fat itself. However, low-fat milk consumption was influenced by nutrition knowledge as well as attitudes about fat intake people with better knowledge and attitudes concerning fat intake consumed more low-fat milk. This could be resulted from the reason that low-fat milk is a good substitute for whole milk. The conclusion of this study is that there are two essential elements in healthy eating patterns： a) good attitudes towards fat and vegetable consumption, and b) correct nutritional knowledge concerning the fat-content of foods and the availability of alternatives.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.157-176
• /
• 2010

The purpose of this study was to estimate the effect of "The unsafe food program" designed for improving children's biased eating habits coming from defenceless exposure to the instant food, fast food and adulterated food with MSG and artificial additives with analyzing the current condition of children's biased eating habits and preference for the unsafe foods. This program was performed for 5 year old children who was attending the kindergarten run by the author every day for two months. "The unsafe food program" consisted of the surveys on the parents' attitude towards food and health and children's eating habits, and of programs that was designed to attract children's attention to their daily food intake and to provide physical fitness, information about differences between wholesome food and junk food, and junk food's bad impacts on human body for children. In order to see the changes of children's body through this program, two physical examinations was preformed: SH pharmaceutical company's hair test to measure the accumulation level of toxic metal in children's hair and children's nutrition level before starting the program, and Ilsan Health Center's 'INBODY' test to analyze children's body composition such as body weight, skeletal muscle mass, body fat mass, BMI, body fat percentage and so on before and after the program. The results from this program follow as below. First, the unsafe foods were excluded from children's diet after parents came to recognize the negative effects of the unsafe foods. Second, children became highly interested in their daily diet through the course of gathering information by themselves and discussions together while testing and analyzing foods, and children demonstrated more self-restraint on fast food and instant food. Third, children's body constitution turned out to be improved by physical fitness in addition to this program. Fourth, children formed a good habit of eating well-balanced diet consisting of vegetables, staple food and fruits through this program designed to improve children's biased eating habits. From the results of this study it was confirmed that "the unsafe food project" had effects on improving children's eating habits.