Relationship of Unbalanced Diet and Eating Behavior between School Age Children and Their Mothers in Wonju Area

Jinhee Hong; Sugyoung Oh; Jayong Chung

doi:10.15384/kjhp.2014.14.1.17

Korean J Health Promot > Volume 14(1); 2014 > Article

Hong, Oh, and Chung: Relationship of Unbalanced Diet and Eating Behavior between School Age Children and Their Mothers in Wonju Area

Original Article

Korean Journal of Health Promotion 2014;14(1):17-25.

Published online: January 20, 2014

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15384/kjhp.2014.14.1.17

Relationship of Unbalanced Diet and Eating Behavior between School Age Children and Their Mothers in Wonju Area

¹Nutrition Education Major, Kyung Hee University Graduate School of Education, Seoul, Korea

²Department of Food and Nutrition, Kyung Hee University College of Human Ecology, Seoul, Korea

Jinhee Hong¹, Sugyoung Oh², Jayong Chung^2,

￭ Corresponding author：Jayong Chung, PhD Department of Food and Nutrition, Kyung Hee University, 26 Kyunghee-daero, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 130-701, Korea
Tel: +82-2-961-0977, Fax: +82-2-961-0261 E-mail: jchung@khu.ac.kr

Received December 11, 2013 Accepted February 26, 2014

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship of unbalanced diet habits and eating behaviors between school age children and their mothers.

Methods

From the Wonju area of Gangwon-do, 232 children and their mothers were recruited for this study. General characteristics, degree of unbalanced diet, eating behaviors, factors associated with food preferences, food preferences, and food intake frequencies were obtained through a questionnaire.

Results

The degree of unbalanced diet habits were significantly correlated between school age children and their mothers. Children's eating behaviors were also highly affected by their mother's eating behaviors. Especially, the frequency of eating breakfast showed a significant correlation between children and mothers. Among the factors associated with food preferences, family eating habits, appetite, and emotions showed significant associations between girls and mothers. As for food preferences, preference for meat in children was not significantly associated with that in their mothers, whereas preference for perilla oil and butter was significantly associated with preference in their mothers. The relationship of food preferences between children and mothers differed according to the sex of the children. Further, the intake frequencies for most foods were highly correlated between children and mothers.

Conclusions

Our study showed that the unbalanced diet habits and eating behaviors of mothers can affect those in their children. Moreover, the correlations of food preferences between children and their mothers were different depending on the sex of the children. Our data suggest that educating mothers about their diet and eating behaviors could improve the eating practices of their children.

Keywords: Unbalanced diet, Eating behavior, Food preference, Mothers, Child

Table 1.

General characteristics of children^a

Variables	Total (n=232)	Boys (n=118)	Girls (n=114)
Height, cm	153.0±7.4	153.4±7.9	152.6±6.8
Weight, kg	43.3±8.9	45.1±9.6	41.4±7.5
Number of brothers and/or sisters
0	30 (13.0)	14 (12.1)	16 (14.0)
1	154 (67)	80 (69.0)	74 (64.9)
2	35 (15.2)	16 (13.8)	19 (16.7)
3 or more	11 (4.8)	6 (5.2)	5 (4.4)

^aValues are presented as Mean±SD or N (%) unless otherwise indicated.

Table 2.

General characteristics of mothers

Variables	N (%)
Age, y
< 30	1 (0.4)
30–35	11 (4.9)
36–40	88 (38.9)
41–45	101 (44.7)
≥46	25 (11.1)
Education
Elementary or middle school	11 (4.9)
High school	96 (42.9)
College/university	110 (49.1)
Graduate school	7 (3.1)
Occupation
Full time job	132 (58.7)
Part time job	24 (10.7)
No (housewife)	69 (30.7)
Children's age when started to work
Pre-school children	95 (44.0)
Elementary lower grades	62 (26.4)
Elementary higher grades	68 (29.5)
Monthly food expenses, 10,000 Korean Won
≤30	30 (13.3)
31–40	57 (25.3)
41–50	56 (24.9)
≥51	70 (31.1)
Others	12 (5.3)

Table 3.

Unbalanced diet and eating behaviors of children and their mothers^a

	Children Mother
	Total	Boys	Girls	Mother
Unbalanced diet
Do you tend to eat only what you want?^b	2.5±1.1	2.4±1.1	2.7±1.1	2.0±0.8
Do you often hear from others that you are a ‘picky eater'?^b	2.1±1.0	2.1±1.0	2.2±1.0	1.8±0.8
Do you often refuse to eat healthy foods if you don't like to?	2.5±1.1	2.4±1.1	2.6±1.1	2.6±1.1
Eating behavior
Do you eat three meals a day?^b	4.2±1.0	4.3±1.0	4.1±1.1	3.9±2.2
Do you eat at regular times?^c	3.8±1.0	3.9±1.0	3.6±0.9	3.8±0.9
Do you eat slowly?^b	3.8±1.0	3.9±1.0	3.7±2.0	3.5±0.9
Do you eat snacks late at night?	2.3±1.0	2.3±0.9	2.4±2.2	2.3±0.9
Do you prefer snacks to meals?^b	2.5±1.1	2.4±1.2	2.6±2.0	2.0±0.8
How many times do you eat breakfast per week?	4.5±1.8	4.6±1.7	4.3±1.9	4.4±1.9
How many times do you eat snacks per day?^b	1.1±1.0	1.1±1.0	1.1±0.9	0.8±0.9

^aEstimated by 5-point scale (5; strongly agree, 1; strongly disagree) except for the frequencies of eating breakfast and eating snacks (times/week), Values are presented as Mean±SD.

^bSignificantly different between children (total) and mother assessed by Student's t-test.

^cSignificantly different between boys and girls assessed by Student's t-test.

Table 4.

Relationships of unbalanced diet and eating behavior between children and their mothers^a

	Total		Boys		Girls
	r	P	r	P	r	P
Unbalanced diet
Do you tend to eat only what you want?	0.14	0.040	0.22	0.017	0.03	0.725
Do you often hear from others that you are a “picky eater?”	0.04	0.546	0.08	0.371	–0.03	0.773
Do you often refuse to eat healthy foods if you don't like to?	–0.04	0.550	–0.07	0.463	–0.02	0.820
Eating behavior
Do you eat three meals a day?	0.22	<0.001	0.28	<0.003	0.16	0.085
Do you eat at regular times?	0.31	<0.001	0.36	<0.001	0.27	<0.004
Do you eat slowly?	0.18	0.008	0.21	0.021	0.19	0.051
Do you eat snacks late at night?	0.28	<0.001	0.22	0.019	0.34	<0.001
Do you prefer snacks to meals?	0.19	<0.006	0.27	<0.003	0.13	0.172
How many times do you eat breakfast per week?	0.33	<0.001	0.25	0.009	0.41	<0.001
How many times do you eat snacks per day?	0.18	0.010	0.15	0.106	0.17	0.069

^aAssessed by Spearman's rank order correlation analysis.

Table 5.

Relationships of factors associated with preferred foods between children and their mothers^a

	Total		Boys		Girls
	r	P	r	P	r	P
Cooking method	0.06	0.397	0.03	0.761	0.08	0.403
Color	0.08	0.230	0.06	0.557	0.10	0.277
Flavor	0.09	0.167	0.02	0.863	0.14	0.132
Texture	0.14	0.036	0.25	0.008	0.04	0.708
Unfamiliarity	0.08	0.259	0.02	0.865	0.13	0.185
Family eating habit	0.17	0.009	0.11	0.231	0.25	0.010
Appetite	0.14	0.034	–0.02	0.872	0.32	<0.001
Emotions, allergy	0.13	0.045	0.06	0.521	0.21	0.028

^aAssessed by Spearman's rank order correlation analysis.

Table 6.

Relationships of food preferences between children and their mothers^a

	Total		Boys		Girls
	r	P	r	P	r	P
Cereal and basic food
Rice	0.05	0.491	0.04	0.676	0.04	0.662
Barley rice	0.18	0.008	0.31	<0.001	0.03	0.729
Noodle	0.10	0.144	0.12	0.208	0.06	0.513
Potato	0.18	0.009	0.26	0.006	0.13	0.173
Sweet potato	0.18	0.006	0.20	0.034	0.19	0.045
Rice cake	0.13	0.047	0.25	0.009	0.04	0.678
Corn	0.17	<0.010	0.21	0.023	0.14	0.151
Cookie	0.24	<0.001	0.17	0.071	0.31	<0.001
Bread	0.19	0.006	0.15	0.115	0.22	0.021
Meat, egg and fish
Fish	0.09	0.184	0.02	0.795	0.15	0.134
Egg	0.15	0.029	0.18	0.066	0.10	0.303
Beef	0.20	<0.003	0.12	0.197	0.27	0.006
Pork	0.22	<0.001	0.15	0.125	0.28	<0.004
Chicken	0.15	0.024	0.15	0.122	0.20	0.036
Milk products
Milk	0.09	0.191	0.15	0.125	0.05	0.632
Cheese	0.17	0.013	0.23	0.014	0.10	0.292
Soy milk	0.11	0.113	0.06	0.506	0.16	0.104
Yogurt	0.04	0.559	0.05	0.630	0.03	0.728
Vegetables and fruits
Carrot	0.11	0.100	0.12	0.211	0.10	0.282
Bean	0.10	0.148	0.21	0.028	0.02	0.832
Mushroom	0.14	0.032	0.10	0.289	0.20	0.042
Spinach	–0.02	0.811	–0.01	0.947	–0.03	0.756
Tomato	0.13	0.047	0.14	0.148	0.13	0.196
Onion	0.10	0.130	0.12	0.191	0.08	0.425
Cucumber	0.08	0.231	0.12	0.227	0.04	0.650
Apple	0.14	0.045	0.23	0.015	–0.01	0.886
Water melon	0.14	0.038	0.23	0.015	0.07	0.469
Pear	0.16	0.017	0.24	0.010	0.07	0.445
Peach	0.19	<0.005	0.22	0.021	0.13	0.189
Grape	0.20	<0.001	0.21	0.029	0.17	0.077
Cooking oil (natural) and dessert
Sesame oil	0.10	0.142	0.11	0.237	0.08	0.414
Perilla oil	0.22	<0.001	0.27	<0.004	0.18	0.067
Soybean oil	0.06	0.381	0.08	0.411	0.05	0.636
Butter	0.17	0.011	0.28	<0.003	0.06	0.563
Soda	0.09	0.163	0.06	0.507	0.11	0.275
Ice cream	0.06	0.383	0.21	0.030	–0.11	0.273

^aAssessed by Spearman's rank order correlation analysis.

Table 7.

Relationships of food intake frequencies between children and their mothers^a

	Total		Boys		Girls
	r	P	r	P	r	P
Rice	0.26	<0.001	0.26	<0.001	0.26	0.007
Barley rice	0.30	<0.001	0.31	<0.001	0.28	0.003
Instant noodle	0.27	<0.001	0.36	<0.001	0.18	0.069
Noodle	0.25	<0.001	0.32	<0.001	0.18	0.063
Bread	0.21	<0.002	0.18	0.062	0.22	0.021
Snack	0.22	<0.001	0.16	0.096	0.30	0.002
Tofu	0.19	<0.005	0.09	0.351	0.30	0.002
Bean	0.22	<0.001	0.22	0.022	0.23	0.016
Potato	0.22	<0.001	0.37	<0.001	0.02	0.800
Sweet potato	0.26	<0.001	0.23	0.015	0.30	0.002
Beef	0.26	<0.001	0.24	0.013	0.28	0.008
Chicken	0.36	<0.001	0.39	<0.001	0.34	<0.001
Pork	0.38	<0.001	0.38	<0.001	0.37	<0.001
Egg	0.28	<0.001	0.26	<0.008	0.30	0.004
Ham	0.19	<0.011	0.09	0.328	0.28	0.101
Mackerel	0.38	<0.001	0.40	<0.001	0.40	<0.001
Tuna	0.38	<0.001	0.37	<0.001	0.41	<0.001
Croaker	0.27	<0.001	0.30	<0.002	0.23	0.020
Pollack	0.15	0.024	0.27	<0.005	0.03	0.782
Anchovy	0.35	<0.001	0.43	<0.001	0.27	0.004
Fish cake	0.28	<0.001	0.32	<0.001	0.23	0.015
Squid	0.22	<0.001	0.29	<0.002	0.14	0.153
Clam	0.24	<0.001	0.34	<0.001	0.15	0.128
Salted fish	0.19	<0.004	0.18	0.063	0.20	0.034
Chinese cabbage	0.20	<0.003	0.19	0.048	0.20	0.034
White radish	0.21	<0.002	0.26	0.006	0.15	0.120
Radish tops	0.21	<0.002	0.19	0.045	0.21	0.031
Bean sprouts	0.29	<0.001	0.29	0.002	0.28	0.003
Spinach	0.29	<0.001	0.31	0.001	0.26	0.006
Cucumber	0.17	0.015	0.16	0.093	0.16	0.993
Chili	0.33	<0.001	0.40	<0.001	0.25	0.001
Carrot	0.17	0.010	0.24	0.058	0.08	0.390
Pumpkin	0.17	0.011	0.24	0.013	0.11	0.262
Cabbage	0.03	0.589	0.06	0.539	–0.01	0.991
Tomato	0.32	<0.001	0.37	<0.001	0.24	0.010
Mushroom	0.31	<0.001	0.44	<0.001	0.15	0.126
Sea mustard	0.26	<0.001	0.31	0.001	0.20	0.036
Laver	0.24	<0.001	0.22	0.023	0.26	0.006
Tangerine	0.23	<0.001	0.23	0.019	0.23	0.012
Persimmon	0.35	<0.001	0.36	<0.001	0.33	<0.001
Pear	0.24	<0.001	0.25	0.009	0.24	0.001
Water melon	0.34	<0.001	0.34	<0.001	0.34	<0.001
Grape	0.29	<0.001	0.28	0.003	0.30	<0.002
Peach	0.42	<0.001	0.38	<0.001	0.45	<0.001
Apple	0.28	<0.001	0.36	<0.001	0.19	0.053
Banana	0.29	<0.001	0.27	0.005	0.32	<0.001
Orange	0.15	0.024	0.04	0.704	0.27	<0.004
Milk	0.24	<0.001	0.02	0.867	0.45	<0.001
Yogurt	0.25	<0.001	0.20	0.035	0.30	<0.001
Ice cream	0.22	<0.001	0.16	0.105	0.29	<0.002

^aAssessed by Spearman's rank order correlation analysis.

References

1. Mary S, Dianne NS, Simone F. Individual and environment influences on adolescent eating behaviors. J Am Diet Assoc 2002;102(3):S40-S51.

2. Lee YS, Lim HS, Ann HS, Jang NS. Nutrition throughout the life cycle: Chapter 5 childhood nutrition. 3rd edition.. Kyomunsa; 2008. p. 254.

3. Ku BJ. A survey of elementary school children's food habit for nutrition education of elementary practical arts. Busan: Pusan National University of Education; 1999. Korean..

4. Choi MK, Lee YS. The dietary behaviors, taste preferences, and nutrient intakes of obese children consuming unbalanced diets. J East Asian Soc Dietary Life 2008;18(1):127-34.

5. Paik JJ, Lee HS. Dietary behaviors, food preferences and its relationships with personality traits in sixth grader's of elementary school. Korean J Community Nutr 2004;9(2):135-41.

6. Jung KA, Yoon J. A study on the relationship between dietary habits and food intake and impulsiveness and aggression in the 6th grade students of the elementary school in Chuncheon area. Culinary Research 2012;18(5):190-204.

7. Lee JS, Choi YS, Bae BS. Association between nutritional knowledge and dietary behaviors of middle school children and their mothers. Korean J Nutr 2011;44(2):140-51.

8. Kyung KS. (The) Effects of mother's employment and nutritional knowledge on dietary attitudes of elementary school students. Seoul: Kyung Hee University; 2012. Korean..

9. Oh SH, Hyun WJ, Lee HM, Park HR, Lim HJ, Song KH. A study on the stress and the dietary habits of elementary school children by mother's employments status. Korean J Community Nutr 2010;15(4):498-506.

10. Oh YJ, Chang YK. Children's unbalanced diet and parents' attitudes. Korean J Nutr 2006;39(2):184-91.

11. Yang HY. Children's preference and consumption of fruits and vegetables according to the stages of parental behavior. Iksan: Wonkwang University;2011. Korean..

12. Jin SO. A study on child's eating habits and attitude according to mother's employment status: for higher-grade elementary school in Changwon City. Changwon: Kyungnam University; 2012. Korean..

13. Chung HJ, Eum YH, Kim JY. A study on the children's eating habits and food preference according to their parents' economic status (Ⅰ). Korean J Nutr 2008;41(1):77-88.

14. Ministry of Health and Welfare, Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The Fourth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey(KNHANES IV). Seoul: Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 2007.

15. Cheong HS. A study on the relationship between nutrition knowledge and food habit of mothers and food preference and other factors of their elementary school children. J Korean Home Econ Assoc 1995;33(3):207-23.

16. Lee JE, Jung IK. A study on eating habits of elementary school students and the perception on the nutrition education in curriculum. J Korean Home Econ Edu 2005;17(2):79-93.

17. Ku PJ, Lee KA. A survey on dietary habit and nutritional knowledge for elementary school children's nutritional education. Korean Journal of Dietary Culture 2000;15(3):201-13.

18. Jun SN, Ro HK. A study on eating habits and food preference of rural elementary school students. Korean Journal of Dietary Culture 1998;13(1):65-72.

19. Park SR. Effect of parents' dietary habit and nutritional recognition on the dietary habit of disabled students. Seoul: Hanyang University; 2008. Korean..

20. Kim JH, Ha AW, Kang NE. Differences in table attitudes, eating habits, and nutrition knowledge in elementary school boys and girls. Korean Journal of Food and Nutrition 2010;23(4):623-32.

21. Hong YJ. A study on a relation of food ecology to obesity index of 5th grade children in Cheju city (II): obesity index of children and food habit of their mothers. Korean Journal of Dietary Culture 1998;13(2):141-51.

22. Park SM. Effects of mother's nutrition knowledge and food habits on the dietary behavior of middle school children. Ulsan: Ulsan University; 2011. Korean..

23. Oh YJ. A study on the correlation between the nutrition knowledge, dietary behavior of elementary school student's mothers and the children's unbalanced diet. Incheon: Incheon University; 2005. Korean..

24. Jung SY. A　study on relationship between the mother's nutrition knowledge and dietary behavior and unbalanced diet of elementary school students. Seoul: Kyung Hee University; 2010. Korean..

25. Choi MJ, Lee GD, Kim HN. A food selection of preschool children and their mother's perception of dietary management. Journal of Child Education 2010;19(1):293-306.