This study was conducted to investigate the dietary behavior of day-care center teachers and their meal attitudes during meal time in Jeonju area. Self administered questionnaires were collected from 266 day-care center teachers who worked in a national(public) or private day-care center. The Statistical data analysis was conducted using SPSS v. 12.0. All subjects were women, and 64.7% were married(p<0.001), over more than 60% were junior college graduates(p<0.05), and 73.7% had salaries greater than 1, 000, 000 won(p<0.001). The breakfast skipping ratio of the subjects was very high, and about 66.5% of the respondents had irregular meals. The snack intake ratios of the subjects in private day-care centers were higher than the subjects in national(public) day-care centers(p<0.001). Approximately 56% of the subjects responded that education about eating is very important for providing balanced nutrition to young children. About 84% of subjects had no experience with the continuing-education program for teachers(p<0.01), and they wanted to know more about balanced nutrition. The meal attitude education score during meal time was 4.53±0.36. The relationship between meal attitude education and the dietary behavior of day-care teachers was significantly different based on the "frequency of overeating"(p<0.05) and "self-recognition of eating habit"(p<0.05). These findings suggest that a nutrition education program for day-care center teachers should be developed so that they can effectively manage meal attitude education for young children and provide good nutrition for themselves.

• 김한수 | Han Soo Kim