A Study on Body Image and Dietary Habits by the Body Mass Index of Middle School Students in Chungnam

The purpose of this study was to provide basic informations for educating juveniles on desirable body image recognition by examining their body image recognition and comparing and finding problems according to gender and body mass index (BMI) in middle school students. The average age of the subjects was 15, their average height was 162.5 ㎝, their average weight was 53.5 ㎏, and their average BMI was 20.1 ㎏/㎡. Male students wanted to gain weight and female students wanted to lose weight. As for body shape, female students thought that they were fat more often than male students. Also the more overweight the students were, the higher their concerns and experiences toward weight control. Among weight control methods, exercise scored highest in all BMI groups. Over 80% of the respondents answered that their weight control effort were not systematic such as via professional counseling. As for the frequency of eating breakfast and dinner in female students, the more a student was overweight, the lower their frequency of eating breakfast and dinner. Many respondents answered that a typical meal time was '10∼20 minutes'. The average eating habit score for all subjects was 38.0. The eating habit scores of male students were significantly higher than those of female students, and there were no significant differences among BMI groups. Eating habit score of 'I have more than two meals with rice everyday' in female overweight group was significantly higher than those of other two groups. These results indicate that the female students' degree of preference for a slim body shape were higher than those of male students. In addition, weight control by students is not systematic through professional counseling; instead they attempt to control their weight by themselves such as a meal skip, which lead to potential danger that they may lose weight carelessly. Therefore, correct body image recognition is greatly needed, and families and schools should make ceaseless efforts to help students properly control their weight and have correct eating attitudes.