• The Korean Journal of Food And Nutrition
• /
• v.31 no.5
• /
• pp.668-676
• /
• 2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate the quality attributes and importance that affects their satisfaction with respect to lunchboxes amongst children from low-income families in Korea. In case of $1-3^{rd}$-grade elementary school, 57.1% received lunch box through the community child center, while 45.2%, 68.5% and 80.7% of $4-6^{th}$-elementary school, middle school, and high school students received the lunch box from home, respectively. Typically, in 40.2% of all grades, the time to eat the meal was within 1~2 hours of delivery, and 34.0% consumed the lunch within 2~6 hours of delivery. With respect to intake of the contents of lunchboxes, 72.0% of the participants answered that they ate 80% of the lunchboxes delivered and 24.9% only ate 50% of the content of lunchboxes. The largest leftover were vegetables (26.9%), and the reason for leaving food was 'do not like to eat (36.1%)' followed by 'no taste (32.6%)'. Regarding improvements in delivery lunchboxes, elementary school students selected 'taste', while middle school and high school students selected 'variety of menu'. The 'nutrition (3.69 point)' of the lunchboxes was the highest satisfaction and the 'variety of menu (3.34 point)' was the lowest. In all grades, 'nutrition' and 'hygiene' were considered to be important as quality attributes of the delivery lunchboxes, and satisfaction was also high. On the other hand, in the $1-3^{rd}$-grade elementary school, 'variety of menu' and 'amount of side dish' were important but satisfaction was low. The $4-6^{th}$-grade elementary school, middle school and high school students stated that 'taste' and 'variety of menu' were important, but satisfaction was low.