Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the perception and eating behaviors of middle school students in Kwangju area about food and nutrition section of Home Economics course. The subjects were 480 middle school students. The major results were as follows： On the perception f food and nutrition section, the 1st graders learned ‘how to settle the problems related to food and nutrition and food choices’. The 2nd graders learned ‘the knowledge and principle of food and nutrition for improving dietary life’. The 3rd graders learned ‘actual dietary life functions like arranging menu and preparing meals’. Consequently, there was a significant difference in each grade and all boy and girl students have the highest response to the item ‘they learn how to settle the nutrition problem and foods choices’. On the interests in food and nutrition section, lower graders and girl students have higher interest than hgiher graders and boy students. The area which was considered as most interesting in food and nutrition sections was ‘cooking’ in all students. The perception of the concern on dietary life after learning food and nutrition section was higher in the 1st graders. On the perception of the area where was a great change in their own dietary life after learning food and nutrition section, the 1st graders responded there was a great change in ‘balanced dietary life’, the 2nd graders in ‘eating habit and nutrition of adolescence’and the 3rd graders in ‘cooking’. Especially, girl students showed more changes. On the perception of degree which food and nutrition section gives a help to actual life, students over 50% responded that it was helpful to their actual life. This showed that the lower the grades, the more help it gave to those students. On the perception of mother’s job, the students with working mother considered that they learned ‘actual dietary life functions like functions like arranging menu and preparing meals’from the food and nutrition section. In addition, they had high interests in the area of ‘cooking’. It was recognized that as the family size was greater, the food and nutrition section gave more helps to actual life. On eating behaviors of breakfast, the higher the grade, the more frequent they don’t have breakfast, boy students have more frequencies of having breakfast than girl students and the primary reason of not having breakfast is poor appetite. On whether going without a meal affects study or not, most of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders whether they are boys and girls or not responded it affected their study. On eating behaviors of lunch, most of boy and girl students in the 1st, 2nd 3rd grade have lunch box. On eating behaviors of supper, eating time is usually between 7：00 and 8：00 p.m and eating hour is mostly 10 or 15 minutes. On eating behaviors between meals, frequency of eating between meals is mostly once or twice a day and girl students have more frequencies of eating between meals, and the cause was hunger commonly in boy and girl students and ‘killing time’in girl students. The focus in getting the foods is ‘taste’and favorite food is fruit regardless of the grade.
