Abstract

A survey of ecological aspects of food, focused on breakfast of 1,526 adults with various professional occupations such as professors, teachers, employees of government, bank and company, and 1,928 students of various levels in the urban areas, was conducted from March, 1984 to February, 1985. The results were shown as follows: Significancy was found between appetite at breakfast, and bed time, status of sleep, eating outside the home on the previous evening, meal or snack of the previous late evening, and exercise before breakfast. The study showed that only 15.2% of the subjects had a good appetite at breakfast; 28.1% had a poor appetite; others had indifferences. About 45% of the subjects had their evening meal between 7pm. and 8pm.; bank employees had breakfast further later than 9pm.. Surprisingly, 31.3% of the subjects had snacks later than 10pm..Nearly one-fourth of subjects, in general, and 34.4% of the subjects in Seoul, had breakfast by themselves due to different schedules of family members. Breakfast patterns of the subjects during a period of 7 days were distributed as follows: 5.5 times for rice-oriented Korean meal; 0.6 times for bread type meal; 0.9 times for the omission of meal. The study described that the subjects who had bread type breakfast consumed only 3.7 items of food, whereas the subjects who had Korean breakfast consumed 7.1 items, on the average. Better breakfast eating habits for an adequate daily diet should be emphasized through nutrition education for adolescents and at the worksite.

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