A Study on the Nutritional Knowledge, Food Habits, Food Preferences and Nutrient Intakes of Urban Middle-Aged Women

This nutritional survey was conducted from February 8 to March 10, 1994, in order to investigate the nutritional knowledge, food habits, nutritional attitude, food preferences and nutrient intakes of urban middle-aged women living in Daegu and Pohang district. The subjects of this survey were 164 urban middle-aged women living in Daegu and Pohang Area. The completely answered questionnaires were analyzed for nutritional knowledge, food habits, nutritional attitude, food preference and nutrient intakes of urban middle-aged women. The results obtained are summarized as follows: The subjects had a high level of perceived knowledge (82.9%), that is the knowledge that each subject believed she had, but the accuracy of the knowledge was only 66.1%. The average nutrition knowledge score was 8.26 out of possible 15 points, and food habit score was 5.50 out of 10 points. Most of the subjects belonged to 'Fair' or 'Good' food habit group, which is considered to be relatively good. With increasing age, the percentage of perceived knowledge, accuracy, and nutrition knowledge score were getting lower. But food habit score and nutritional attitude score were getting higher at 40's women than 30's women. The correlation between nutritional knowledge score and food habit score was low (r=0.0748). The correlation between nutritional attitude score and food habit score was low, too (r=-0.0653). Food preferences for kimchi, potato, cooked rice, beef, noodle, cabbage and milk were high. Average calorie and protein intake of the subjects were , respectively. Carbohydrate, protein and fat ratio on energy composition was 63.3%:15.5%:21.2%.