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Skipping Breakfast and Having Snacks of Middle School Students in Incheon and Factors Affecting Their Dietary Habits
Author(s) -
Chung Hyun-Jung,
Park Ju-Il
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.26.1_supplement.815.15
Subject(s) - underweight , overweight , environmental health , medicine , hygiene , taste , food habits , snacking , obesity , food science , chemistry , pathology
This study was to investigate habits of skipping breakfast and having snacks of middle school students in Incheon, Korea and to identify factors that affect their dietary habits, to help them take the right nutrients and form the right dietary habits, and to provide basic data for dietary life education to improve their health. The subjects were 392 boys and girls attending a middle school in Incheon. Of the middle school students in Incheon, 46.7% had breakfast every day. Having breakfast had not much influence on having snacks. They preferred taste(66.6%) and price(13%) to nutrition(8.4%) and hygiene(10.2%) when choosing snacks. There were small differences in the kinds of snacks preferred between boys and girls; while the girls often had “flour‐based foods and street foods”(26%), “confectionery”(41%) and “candy and chocolate”(42.7%), the boys had “ices”(32.5%) and “soft drinks”(30%) more often. As for dietary habits and attitudes, there were significant differences between the boys and the girls in that the former drinks milk more often (34.5%) and finish foods faster(81.5%) than the girls. BMI, sleeping hours, stress, and mother's educational background affected having breakfast and snacks, dietary habits and attitudes. Those who did not experience stress(56.3%) had more snacks than those who suffered a lot of stress(39.4%). The subjects with normal weight (34.1%) had meals regularly than the underweight(21.3%) and overweight(28.6%) subjects. The less stress they had, the more likely they were to have all three meals, have meals on scheduled time, and have meals slowly with more leisure. Most of the middle school students in Incheon were aware of the importance of breakfast but failed to have breakfast every morning due to various reasons. These results indicate that there are needs for education and research about the criteria of choosing snacks so that the students can have desirable and nutritious snacks on their own. Grant Funding Source : Inha University