Abstract
This study is performed to examine the meal management attitudes of housewives who had elementary schoolchildren in the remote rural areas(RA: n = 318, $37.2{\pm}0.3$ years of age) in comparison to those in their vicinity urban area(UA: n = 349, $36.9{\pm}0.2$ years of age) in the Chungnam province in Korea. The subjects were asked to fill out the questionnaire on their attitudes of meal management for their families. The results obtained in this study were as followings: (1) Most husbands of the subjects had a farming job in the RA while they had salaried workers in the UA(p<0.001). Education levels of both subjects and their husbands were lower in the RA than in the UA. Nuclear families were dominated by both groups, however single parent-family and step parent-family were more prevalent in the RA than in the UA. (2) in terms of ways of getting foods such as grains, meats, eggs, vegetables and fruits, the RA housewives relied more often on self-production than did the UA housewives(p<0.001). (3) The frequency of purchasing unprocessed foods was lower in the RA than in the UA(p<0.001). The RA housewives purchased the convenient foods such as instant noodles(p<0.05), ready to eatsoups(p<0.001), retort pouch foods(p<0.05) and instant teas(p<0.05) more frequently than did the UA housewives, while tuna, canned in oil(p<0.01), milk and their products(p<0.001), soybean products(p<0.001) and snacks(p<0.01) were purchased less often by the RA housewives. (4) Family members except housewives engaged more often in meal preparation in the RA than did those in the UA(p<0.001), which was more strongly observed for dinner. The time spent in preparing the dinner was shorter in the RA than in the UA(p<0.001). (5) The degrees of endeavor to provide the subjects' offspring with balanced meal(p<0.001) and nutrition education(p<0.01) were lower in the RA than in the UA. The RA housewives had more difficulty for performing meal management because of 'over work-related fatigue', 'insufficient money to purchase foods' and 'far distance from grocery' than the UA housewives(p<0.001). The RA housewives had lower score on nutritional knowledge(p<0.001) and wanted more strongly nutritional knowledge to improve the quality of family's meal than did the UA housewives(p<0.01). Therefore, the RA housewives had various problems regarding meal management such as 'over work related to fatigue', 'food-purchasing inconvenience', 'low economic status of family' and 'lack of nutritional knowledge'. As a consequence the RA housewives relied on cheap convenient foods more often in order to prepare the meal easily than did the UA housewives. These findings emphasize the need in the RA for nutrition education for housewives and a range of nutrition policies that focus upon the social and economic determinants of food choice within families to improve the nutritional status of the RA residents.