Nutrient Intakes Differences of the People Living Near the Nuclear Plant by the Household Income Level / 대한지역사회영양학회지

This study was conducted to measure and evaluate the food and nutrient intakes of the people living near the nuclear plant and to investigate the relationship between the household income level and the food and nutrient intake patterns. A total of 552 cases (263 males and 289 females) were surveyed during the period from April 1 to December 21 of 2005. Dietary intake was measured by means of the 24-hour recall method. The data were analyzed using SPSS Windows (ver. 14.0). The household income level of the subjects was classified into two groups : Low income group (LIG; 2,000,000). The subjects at large had less energy and nutrient intakes than did the population in town and village who participated in the 2005 National Health and Nutrition Survey. The intake of calcium, zinc, vitamin A, riboflavin, vitamin B6, vitamin C, and folic acid was less than the Estimated Average Requirement in case of 50~95% of the subjects. The LIG consumed less beans, vegetables, fruits, meats, and beverages than did the HIG in male, while the LIG consumed less eggs and beverages than did the HIG in female. The LIG consumed less nutrients than did the HIG in male, except for carbohydrate, while the LIG consumed less nutrients including zinc, vitamin A, riboflavin, vitamin B6, vitamin C, folic acid than did the HIG in female. In addition, the LIG had higher percentage energy consumption from carbohydrate. These results suggest that higher food and nutrient intake is associated with higher income.

A Study on the Promotion of Adolescent's Milk Consumption (I): Milk Preference and Intake Patterns of Urban Adolescents

In order to study milk preference and intake pattern of adolescents, the questionnaire survey was conducted with 929 middle and high school students residing in Chungnam cities through October and November 2004. Of the subjects, 56.3% liked milk or liked very much. They preferred chocolate and fruit-tasted milk to plain milk. Reasons for liking milk were for health and its taste, while the reasons of disliking were unpleasant smell and stomach upset. However those who disliked milk did like milk products such as ice-cream, yogurt or cheese. Of the students 35.1% drank milk 2 times or more a day, while 11.8% drank milk less than 2-3 times a month. As a whole they drank milk 8.6+/-6.7 times a week, of which 4.3+/-3.1 times for plain milk. Daily intake amount was estimated as 308+/-315mL. Middle-school students and boys drank more milk than high-school students and girls, respectively. Among the students 64.3% used to drink 1 cup of milk at a time, and 58.3% drank only milk without other foods. It was shown that 51.8% took milk school-serviced and their milk intake frequencies were higher than those of who were not given school milk service. Also milk intake frequencies was higher in students whose mother were housewives than in students whose mother had jobs. Milk preference, intake frequency, and one portion size showed significant and positive correlations each other. In conclusion, milk intake level of the subjects was insufficient and unpleasant smell and stomach upset were the main reasons which decreased milk preference and consumption. Students with low milk preference should be guided with how to drink milk deliciously, how to choose milk type and its products. It is also effective to go into school milk service and to provide milk at home anytime. As students like much fruit-tasted and chocolate milk, the milk processing industries should take their nutritional and health benefits into considerations importantly.

A Study on the Promotion of Adolescent's Milk Consumption (II): Relationships of Adolescent's Milk Intake Frequency with Food Attitude, Snacking Frequency, Physical Activity and School Vending Facilities

In order to investigate the ecological factors affecting milk intake frequency of adolescents, the questionnaire survey was conducted with 929 middle and high school students living in Chungnam urban area through October and November 2004. The subjects consumed milk 8.6+/-6.7 times per week, other beverages 4.4+/-4.1 times per week and drinking water 3.7+/-2.1 cups per day. Of the students 77.3% took balanced meals, 72.8% ate regularly and 36.2% ate adequate amount. About 61% had breakfast everyday and nearly a half students snacked once a day. Nutritional knowledge scores about milk was 7.2+/-1.7 and milk attitude scores was 28.1+/-6.5. The subjects spent daily 1.8+/-1.1, 1.9+/-1.1, and 1.0+/-0.5 hours for computer use, TV watching and exercise, respectively. Milk intake frequencies were positively correlated with excercise, snack frequency, meal balance and regularity, breakfast frequency, food attitude score and milk preference, while showed negative correlationships with TV watching and computer use. Intake frequency of fruit-tasted and chocolate milk showed inverse correlation with nutritional knowledge. Subjects without either school store or vending machine took milk more frequently than those with one or both did. Of the correlated variables, milk preference was the most important influencing factor to milk intake frequency according to the stepwise linear regression analysis, which presented other 5 important influencing factors as food attitude, school vending facilities, excercise, snacking frequency and watching TV. In conclusion, the improvement of milk preference is the most important and effective way to promote milk consumption in adolescents. The favorite ways of drinking milk, nutritional benefit of milk, healthy beverage and good snacking should be taught in nutrition education. Also physical activities should be recommended to students rather than watching TV, computer use and vending facilities selling soft drinks should be limited to be established inside school.

Effect of Nutrition-Related Education on the Acceptance of TV Food Advertisement in Middle School Students / 대한지역사회영양학회지

This study was to investigate the effect of the education about general nutrition knowledge on the acceptance of TV food advertisements in adolescents. Twenty hours of nutrition related education in home economics classes were done during 3 months, to conveniently selected 784 first grade middle school students living in large and small cities and rural areas of Chungnam Province. The education effects were evaluated through questionnaire surveys before and after the education and their comparative analysis. Average TV watching time was 2.92 +/- 1.66 hours per day, which was about one hour longer on weekends. Nearly half of the subjects watched TV mainly after 9 PM. After nutrition education, nutrition knowledge scores of total subjects were significantly increased from 7.73 +/- 2.16 to 10.25 +/- 2.51 with a full score of 16. Food attitude and food habit scores also significantly increased from 32.45 +/- 4.65 (full score 50) to 33.93 +/- 4.68 and from 36.20 +/- 5.70 to 37.29 +/- 5.87, respectively. The general acceptance of TV food advertisements scored 25.25 +/- 4.44 (full score 40) before education and 26.90 +/- 4.55 after education, which was significantly raised by the education. Acceptance scores of TV food advertisements showed significant positive relationships with the scores of nutrition knowledge, food attitudes, and food habits. In addition, TV watching time had negative relationships with nutrition knowledge, food attitudes, and food habits scores, but not with acceptance score of TV food advertisements. The above results suggested that school-based nutrition education improved slightly but significantly the attitude of accepting TV food advertisements maybe through increasing nutrition knowledge and making food attitudes and habits better. Nutrition education focused on the evaluation and acceptance of food advertisements are further needed to improve the TV food advertisement acceptance of adolescents.

Beverage Consumption and Related Factors among Adolescents in the Chungnam Urban Area / 대한지역사회영양학회지

In order to investigate the adolescent's beverage drinking pattern and its related ecological factors, a questionnaire survey was conducted with the subjects of 920 middle and high-school students, 450 boys and 470 girls, residing in 4 cities of the Chungnam area. Of the subjects 65% liked, or liked very much, beverages and only 3.7% did not like beverages. They drank beverages 4.3 +/- 4.0 times a week on average, but 10.4% of them drank beverages more than twice a day. Male students drank more frequently than the females. The intake frequency of carbonated drinks was 1.7 +/- 2.3 a week, which was about 40% of the total beverages. However, more students drank mainly ion beverages (33.6%) than carbonated drinks (28.7%). As the students took more balanced food and ate more regularly, their beverage drinking frequency decreased and those taking carbonated drinks also tended to decrease. The more frequent the students took fast food, the more frequent they drank carbonated beverages. The drinking frequencies for beverages or carbonated beverages were also less in students eating cooked rice with sidedishes as breakfast than in students eating others. The drinking frequency for carbonated drinks showed significant correlations with the students' activities such as the time spent using computers and watching TV got longer, the drinking frequency for soft drinks was also higher. When nutritional knowledge was higher, drinking frequency for carbonated drinks got lower. In conclusion, to make the adolescents improve their attitudes toward drinking beverages and to prevent excessive drinking of carbonated drinks, they should be educated not only on the nutritional knowledge and the proper intake of beverages, but also on good dietary habits including balance, regularity, and types of meals. Proper snacking and fast food consumption also should be taught. Since ion beverages were taken more frequently than carbonated drinks among adolescents, further study is recommended on the impact of excessive intake of ion beverages.

Effects of School-based Nutrition Education for Korean Food Guide on Food Intake Frequency of Adolescents / 대한지역사회영양학회지

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of nutrition education about the Korean food guide to middle school students on food intake measured by food frequency. Three hundred first graders were sampled from two coeducational middle schools located in the small city of Chungnam area, and divided into 167 (74 boys, 93 girls) education groups of one school and 133 (70 boys, 63 girls) non education groups of the other school. Nutrition education was given to the education group for a total of 16 hours and no education to the non education group during the same period. After education, average nutrition knowledge scores of education group increased from 6.40 +/- 2.17 to 6.81 +/- 1.56 significantly, especially boys with a high range of increase and girls no increase. Dietary habit scores improved significantly from 46.2 +/- 6.5 to 49.1 +/- 6.2 in both boys and girls of education group. Of the knowledge and dietary habits, ability of choosing a balanced meal, biased eating to some food, and taking diverse foods at every meal improved significantly in education group. In non education group no significant increases of either nutrition knowledge scores and dietary habit scores were shown. In addition education group showed significant increases after education, in the intake frequencies of rice noodle loaf bread, kimchi, green and yellow vegetables, and soybean soybean curds by 0.27, 0.23, 0.40 and 0.32 servings per day, compared with non education group. These changes were greater in girls than in boys. According to these results, it can be concluded that nutrition education about the Korean food guide improved effectively not only student's nutrition knowledge and dietary habits, but also healthy food intake ability. It is necessary to prepare long-term and continuous school-based nutrition education programs for the students to get into a habit of healthy food intake.

Antitumor activity of spinasterol isolated from Pueraria roots

We purified phytoestrogens from Pueraria root (Pueraria mirifica from Thailand and Pueraria lobata from Korea), which is used as a rejuvenating folk medicine in Thailand and China. Dried, powdered plant material was extracted with 100% ethanol and further separated by concentration, filtration, and thin layer silica gel chromatography. Using the fractions obtained during separation, we first investigated their cytotoxicity in several cancer cell lines from various tissues. The ethanol-extracted components (PE1, PE4) had significant antiproliferative effects on breast cancer cell lines, including MCF-7, ZR-75-1, MDA-MB-231, SK-BR-3, and Hs578T. Second, we compared these results with the cytotoxic effects of known flavonoids, sterols, and coumarins from Pueraria root. The known compounds were not as effective, and occurred in a different polarity region on HPLC. Third, further separation resulted in the isolation of eight different components (Sub PE-A to -H). One of these, PE-D, affected the growth of some breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7, MDA-MB-231) in a dose- and time-dependent manner, as well as the growth of ovarian (2774) and cervical cancer cells (HeLa). Finally, a transfection assay showed that this component had an estrogenic effect similar to 17beta-estradiol, which activates both estrogen receptor a (ER alpha) and ER beta. The NMR analysis determined that spinasterol (stigmasta-7, 22-dien-3beta-ol) is an active cytotoxic component of Pueraria root.

Effect of Nutrition Education on Improving Diet Behavior of University Students / 대한지역사회영양학회지

This study was to investigate the changes in nutrition knowledge, nutrition attitude and food habit during 'meal management and diet' course to nonmajor university students by questionnaires. 280 students of Chungnam university who registered nonmajor 'meal management and diet' course in the 2003 were the subjects. The results of this study are as follows. BMIs of male and female students were 21.5 and 19.3. According to BMI, underweight subjects were 24.3%, normal and overweight (danger & obesity) subjects were each 62.4% and 13.6%, respectively. The nutrition knowledge scores significantly (p < 0.001) increased from 12.1 to 14.0 after the lecture, and the uncertainty rate of nutrition knowledge decreased significantly. Also, there were no significant differences in nutrition attitude score (39.5 to 39.8 points). Female subjects showed significantly (p < 0.05) higher nutrition knowledge scores (12.3 points) than male (11.4 points). 20% of the subjects smoked and 82.9% had alcohol drinks and 24.4% exercised more than 3 times per week. The subjects who ate regular meals significantly increased from 9.3 to 12.5% after the lecture, and smoking subjects decreased from 20 to 13%, but alcohol drinking subjects did not changed significantly.

A Study to Develop Food and Nutrition Cyberclass Contents for Nonmajor University Students / 대한지역사회영양학회지

This study was intended to develop food and nutrition cyberclass contents for nonmajor students at university. We investigated universities which offered food and nutrition related courses in 1998 by a telephone survey in order to select the most appropriate lecture contents for the nonmajor university students. We investigated to select the most needed lecture contents for the students, 15 questions on evaluation of cyberclasses which they took. The number of subjects were 140 students of 'C' university who registered for nonmajor food and nutrition course in 1998. Among 140 students, 80 were cyberclass students and 60 were non cyberclass students. The results of the survey were as following : Fifty-five universities out of 62 had curriculums on food and nutrition in 1998 and 36,802 students attended the non major food and nutrition lectures. 84.9% of the respondents had their own computes and the main application mostly used was word processing. Additionally, 33.3% of them used on-line communications and 81.4% of them used internet. The most interesting subject of the respondents was 'disease and nutrition management'. The male respondents were concerned more about 'alcohol and health', whereas the females were concerned about 'obesity and weight control'.