• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.296-308
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• 2009

According to Lee In-ja's research into the cooks of Korea, there are more than 1.2 million culinary professionals in Korea. However, it is hard to find studies on their work environment. From this point, this study aims to examine the shoes worn by culinarians in their workplace and facilitate the improved environment to protect culinary professionals against potential dangers such as slips, occupational and industrial injuries and fatigue, on the basis of the shoes they wear. The research was conducted on a representative cross section of safety shoes currently worn by culinary professionals. The four factors to be tested and measured for the study were weight, slip resistance, internal tearing strength and splitting resistance. Findings on inquiry showed that the shoes tested were quite heavy, slippery and readily liable to splitting under low stress - when compared to standardized base figures. In accordance with the results of this experiment, guidelines for four factors of manufacture were suggested. First, chef's shoes should weigh not more than 1% of a wearers weight. Second, they should exhibit more than 0.50 $\mu$ slip resistance. Third, they should withstand at least 50.0 N/mm tearing strength. And finally, they should have upwards of 3.0 kg/cm splitting resistance.