This study compared the dietary perceptions, food labeling behaviors, and purchasing patterns of vegetarians and nonvegetarians. The data from 5,811 adults aged ≥19 years who participated in the 2023 Consumer Behavior Survey for Food were analyzed. The participants were divided into vegetarians and non-vegetarians according to their dietary practices. Vegetarians were further divided into strict, semi, and occasional vegetarians. Non-vegetarians regularly consumed plantand animal-based foods without dietary restrictions. Vegetarians comprised 15.4% of the participants, and health (50.4%) was the primary motivation for adopting a vegetarian lifestyle. Compared to non-vegetarians, vegetarians prioritized their rights and responsibilities as citizens and identified a vegetable-centered diet as the most crucial factor for health. Vegetarians showed greater interest and trust in food labeling than non-vegetarians. Vegetarians selected a wider variety of food and had different purchasing motivations when purchasing eco-friendly foods than non-vegetarians. Vegetarians exhibited higher purchase frequencies across all categories than non-vegetarians and had different reasons for purchasing convenience foods. These findings highlight the diversity of vegetarian dietary motivations and behaviors, emphasizing the need for tailored dietary policies and education.

The purpose of this study is to observe the influence education experience (home, school, and mass media) on reducing practice behavior(purchasing, using, disposing and leading) of food-related wastes. The study also sought to promote strategy and suggest effective activation plans for the vitalization of behavior of reducing food-related wastes. The study subjects were 412 adult consumers who answered a structured questionnaire. The main findings are as follows: First, the scores of home education experience were 3.61±0.71, which was the highest, and 3.45±0.74 for school education experience, which was the lowest. Second, according to factor analysis, the reducing practice behavior of food-related wastes was converged purchasing, using, disposing and leading behavior. The scores of disposing behavior were 3.79±0.67, which was the highest, and 2.87±0.82 for leading behavior, which was the lowest. Third, the common variables influencing the reducing practice behavior(purchasing, using, disposing and leading) of food-related wastes were home education and mass media and the powerful variable influencing was home education. The results of this study can be used as basic data for the development of educational programs for effective food-related waste reduction.

Although adolescents’ obesity prevalence increases recently in Korea due to Westernized dietary life, according to social and economic development, and physical activity decline, distorted body image and improper dietary habits are prevalent, because of excessive obsession with weight control, deriving from psychological impacts including appearance supremacy. This study conducted a survey on health oriented awareness and attitude related with dietary habits targeting adolescents, such as high school students and college students, younger than 24, from May 11 to May 29, 2015. In this study, 280 questionnaire copies were collected out of 300 distributed questionnaire copies, and used 269 copies as analysis data, except 11 copies of which responses were inadequate. The results of this study are as follows: First, the high school students showed higher dietary regularity than the college students. Especially, 95.5% of the college students showed very high irregularity of lunch, compared with just 4.5% of the high school students. Second, the adolescents showed distorted perceived body image in comparison with body mass index (BMI). As a result of examining BMI relationship, according to one’s own perception on body type, 28.6% of the respondents perceived themselves fat, despite normal BMI, and 40.4% of the respondents perceived themselves normal, despite low BMI. Third, health behavior activities level was higher, as the regularity of breakfast (B=1.093), lunch, (B=0.650), and dinner (B=0.765) was higher. The variable affecting the most (β =0.372) was the regularity of breakfast. As interest in weight control was higher, health behavior activities was lower. Because over-interest in weight control may be linked with improper dietary habits or weight control, a caution is needed. The results of this study are expected to be utilized as the basic data for the policy and health-oriented program development to improve adolescents’ health behavior practice.

This study aimed to analyze the beverage usage behavior according to the food-related lifestyle in Seoul, Gyeonggi province area. Group 1, named ‘health & safety seeking’ group, consists of high percentage of women in their 40s, as well as a high percentage of high income and highly educated. Group 2, was group of ‘high interest in dietary life’, consists of a high percentage of women in their 30s, highly educated, earned 3~5 million won. Group 3, named ‘convenience seeking’ group, had a high percentage of men and of those in their 20s who earned less than 2 million won. In verifying the difference between food-related lifestyle groups in terms of their behaviors and attitudes towards the usage of beverage specialty shop, group 1 showed significantly high score in the number of visit beverage specialty shops, the intention to spend higher average expenditure per visit per person, importance of selection attributes of beverage specialty sho

The purpose of this study was to analyze middle students' carbonated beverages selection and consumption behaviors depending on their food-related lifestyle. Data was collected from 307 middle students in Incheon region through a self-administered questionnaire. According to the results of the factor analysis, food-related lifestyle showed that the average is more than 3.0, 0.800 in Cronbach alpha coefficient. There were significant differences in carbonated beverages preference according to health seeking, easy seeking, popularity seeking, and safety seeking type (p<0.05). Also easy seeking and popularity seeking type lifestyle showed significant differences in the reason to drink carbonated drinks (p<0.05), especially school canteen amenities tended to pursue the highest fashion. A significant significance positive result of the consumption of carbonated beverages (p<0.01) was shown for the easy seeking type. A significant positive result of the consumption of carbonated beverages (p<0.01) was shown for the taste seeking and safety seeking type. Analysis of the relationship between carbonated beverage consumption, and form factor showed a high correlation coefficient of 0.617 and with brand design, while the taste and the price were (p<0.05) 0.446, and 0.437 in order to design and calories, respectively.

The aim of this study was to classify Korean consumers based on their food-related lifestyle type, and to investigate the relationship between sushi consumption and food-related lifestyle type. Self-reported questionnaires were completed by 300 Korean adults. The SPSS 18.0 program was used to analyze the samples. Data was analyzed by frequency, descriptive factor, reliability, cluster analysis, ANOVA, and chi-square test. A factor analysis extracted four factors comprising foodrelated lifestyle, which we named Health-seeking (factor 1), Taste-seeking (factor 2), Convenience-seeking (factor 3), and Economy-seeking (factor 4). According to a cluster analysis based on those four factors, consumers were classified into three clusters. Cluster 1 was the Taste and Health-seeking cluster, Cluster 2 was the Convenience-seeking cluster, and Cluster 3 was the Passive Eating Habits cluster. The results also indicated that the selection attributes of each cluster were significantly different in terms of perception, the global state of sushi, sushi preference, frequency, companions, place of sushi consumption, and preference for different sushi sub-ingredients. Based on these results, consumer characteristics in the sushi market are discussed.