Dietary Behavior and Attitude for the Food and Nutrition Section in the Home Economics Curriculum of Middle School Students in Rural Area

The study was performed to investigate the dietary behaviors and attitudes toward the lesson of Food and Nutrition in Home Economics course among middle school students in rural area. The participants of the study were 647 second-grade students in a middle school in Geumsan-gun, Chungcheongnam-do. The main nutrition problems of the students were found to be deviated food-intake habits and irregular meal time. Twenty six percent of female students and 14.8% of male students skipped breakfast. Seventy three percent of the total students have a tendency of food aversions. The food groups they dislike most were vegetables and pulses. They answered they got nutrition information mostly from the class at school. Their favorite topic in the lesson of Food and Nutrition was cooking. Some students did not like Food and Nutrition because it requires too much memorization. Teaching methods they liked were lecture, discussion, and audio-visual presentation. Although 81.7% of the students thought that the lesson of Food and Nutrition was useful, only 17.1% of the students practiced what they learned from the lesson. These results confirm that nutrition education in middle school is essential to the students in rural area and that it is needed to find an effective teaching method and materials for them to change positively their food behaviors at daily life.