A Survey on Eating Behaviors of Preschool Children for Development Snack

This study was conducted to investigate eating behaviors of preschool children for development their snack. Eating habit, preference and nutritional state were investigated using a questionnaire answered by teachers of day-care centers, 548 preschool children(aged 4 to 6 years old) and their mothers. It was found that 93.6% of subjects thought children need to eat snacks not only at day-care center but also at home. For children, snacks clearly played an important role in dietary nutritional intake The frequency and rate of consuming Milk as snack were high, 53.2% of calcium intake from Milk. The most favorite snack foods of children were fresh fruits, milk, yoghurt, juice. The correlation between frequency of eating food as snack and children's preference for food was low; because choosing food as children's snack was not by themselves but by their mothers and teachers, and variety of food(a taste, kinds) as snack was very weak. Subjects showed rather dissatisfactory view about commercial snack, and wanted new development of nutritionally balanced and natural-tasted snack for preschool children; they preferred dducks, biscuits and snacks as the form of newly-developed snack for preschool children.