Family factors for child meal skipping in low-income families in Korea.

The present study proposed to examine whether family factors are associated with child meal skipping in Korea. Family factors were divided into risk factors and protective factors on conceptual and theoretical bases. The sample was obtained from the Survey of Meal Service for Poor Children conducted by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs in 2007. A final sample was composed of 944 children in low-income families who are served by the public meal program. Child meal skipping was positively associated with risk factors and negatively associated with protective factors, as hypothesized. Single-father family, middle or small urban area, presence of caretaker after school, health level of caretaker, caretaker's concern about child's diet, and degree of family cohesion significantly predicted child meal skipping. The authors suggest a few implications for practice based on the study findings.

NutriSonic web expert system for meal management and nutrition counseling with nutrient time-series analysis, e-food exchange and easy data transition.

This study was conducted to develop the NutriSonic Web Expert System for Meal Management and Nutrition Counseling with Analysis of User's Nutritive Changes of selected days and food exchange information with easy data transition. This program manipulates a food, menu and meal and search database that has been developed. Also, the system provides a function to check the user's nutritive change of selected days. Users can select a recommended general and therapeutic menu using this system. NutriSonic can analyze nutrients and e-food exchange ("e" means the food exchange data base calculated by a computer program) in menus and meals. The expert can insert and store a meal database and generate the synthetic information of age, sex and therapeutic purpose of disease. With investigation and analysis of the user's needs, the meal planning program on the internet has been continuously developed. Users are able to follow up their nutritive changes with nutrient information and ratio of 3 major energy nutrients. Also, users can download another data format like Excel files (.xls) for analysis and verify their nutrient time-series analysis. The results of analysis are presented quickly and accurately. Therefore it can be used by not only usual people, but also by dietitians and nutritionists who take charge of making a menu and experts in the field of food and nutrition. It is expected that the NutriSonic Web Expert System can be useful for nutrition education, nutrition counseling and expert meal management.

Construction of web-based nutrition education contents and searching engine for usage of healthy menu of children.

A diet habit, which is developed in childhood, lasts for a life time. In this sense, nutrition education and early exposure to healthy menus in childhood is important. Children these days have easy access to the internet. Thus, a web-based nutrition education program for children is an effective tool for nutrition education of children. This site provides the material of the nutrition education for children with characters which are personified nutrients. The 151 menus are stored in the site together with video script of the cooking process. The menus are classified by the criteria based on age, menu type and the ethnic origin of the menu. The site provides a search function. There are three kinds of search conditions which are key words, menu type and "between" expression of nutrients such as calorie and other nutrients. The site is developed with the operating system Windows 2003 Server, the web server ZEUS 5, development language JSP, and database management system Oracle 10 g.

The iron status, clinical symptom and anthropometry between normal and anemic groups of middle school girls.

This research analyzed the iron status, clinical symptoms and physical characteristics between normal and anemic group of middle school girls in the Ulsan metropolitan area. It was carried out with 237 subjects (normal 190, anemic subject 47). They were evaluated with a questionnaire and measurement of hematological indices. BMI (kg/m(2)) of the two groups were 19.54 +/- 2.44 (normal girls) and 19.22 +/- 2.27 (anemic girls). The hemoglobin concentration of the anemic girls were 10.84 +/- 1.17g/dl and the serum iron of the anemic girls represent 35.15 +/- 27.47 microg/100 ml. The TIBC (Total Iron Binding Capacity) of the anemic girls showed significantly high to 449.30 +/- 64.87 microg/100 ml. The serum ferritin of the anemic girls was 20.53 +/- 42.29 microg/l, it represented significantly low. The symptom of 'pale face' of the anemic girls were higher than the normal girls. Hemoglobin and serum iron were negatively correlated with 'pale face'. The TIBC was negatively correlated with 'Get a cold easily'. The duration and amount of menstruation were correlated with iron status. This research is to be utilized as basic data for dietary support and nutritional education to improve their iron status.