Abstract
The purpose of the study is to examine the demographic characteristics and socio-psychological factors affecting willingness to take health foods among elderly, which is to get the basic materials of educational program for helping their desirable intake of healthy food. The data were collected from 1,032 elderly subjects and analyzed by SPSS Windows Version 12.0. About forty-one percent of the respondents were taking health foods in the period of survey. The main reason of taking health foods was to maintain and improve their health. The elderly subjects were classified into three groups: (1) a group having willingness to take healthy food, (2) a group having unwillingness to take healthy food, and (3) a group having a wait-and-see attitude. According to the results of chi-square and analysis of one-way variance, there were significant differences among three groups in the variables of 'sex', 'age', 'educational level', 'marriage status', 'monthly allowance', 'eating habit', 'concerns about health', 'self -evaluation of health condition', 'self-evaluation of health condition compared to the same age', 'concerns about health foods', and 'awareness of health foods'. In addition, the result of multinomial logistic regression analysis showed that the factors affecting willingness to take health foods in the future are 'age', 'concerns about health', 'self-evaluation of health condition compared to the same age', 'awareness of health foods', and 'intake of health foods in the period of survey'.
