The principal objective of this study was to determine the effects of mothers' nutrition knowledge on preschoolers' obesity and dietary habits. The subject population included 456 mothers and their preschoolers, aged 3 to 5 years, who were enrolling in kindergartens located in Seoul and KyongGi-Do, Korea. The results of this study are as follows: 1. The majority of mothers responded correctly to those questions concerning obesity-related nutritional knowledge, but responded incorrectly to questions regarding basic nutritional knowledge. 2. The mothers' nutritional knowledge was associated significantly with the mother's age (p<0.05) and degree of education (p<0.05). 3. The mothers' nutritional knowledge was significantly and negatively correlated with their obesity, but not with their preschoolers' obesity. 4. Mothers' nutritional knowledge was determined to be positively associated with higher interest in nutritional information and food selection in regard to weight management strategies for their kids. 5. In general, preschoolers whose mother had excellent nutrition knowledge evidenced better dietary habits than preschoolers whose mothers had poor nutrition knowledge. In particular, one question regarding serving size was significantly associated with mothers' general level of nutritional knowledge(p<0.05).

The purpose of this study was to survey the concern for health, nutrition knowledge, and nutritional attitude of the elementary school children's mothers, to investigate the correlations among them, and to estimate their effects on the growth of their children. The questionnaire was answered by 780 mothers in the Busan area. The concerns over health and nutritional attitude were above average in all items. The perception and accuracy with respect to nutrition knowledge were 90.3% and 77.0%, respectively, and the mean score of the nutrition knowledge was 17.5 on a basis of twenty-five. This indicates that the subjects had a comparatively deep concern for health and good knowledge of nutrition, and professed a relatively desirable attitude. These results indicate a desirable dietary attitude for children as well as parents. The correlation coefficients between nutrition knowledge and a concern for health, and between nutrition knowledge and nutritional attitude were very low. This suggests that the subjects' knowledge of nutrition does not develop into practice. The correlation coefficient was high (r=.610) between the concern for health and the nutritional attitude. In conclusion, the nutrition education program for mothers should be developed to add good practice to knowledge, thus increasing the concern for health, correcting their faulty knowledge of nutrition, teaching the good nutrition, and taking a practical attitude toward the use of their present nutritional knowledge.