Chinese Female Marriage Immigrants' Dietary Life after Immigration to Korea : Comparison between Han-Chinese and Korean-Chinese

Article information

Korean J Community Nutr. 2014;19(4):317-327

Publication date (electronic) : 2014 August 31

doi : https://doi.org/10.5720/kjcn.2014.19.4.317

Kana Asano ¹, Jihyun Yoon ¹, Si-Hyun Ryu ²

¹Department of Food and Nutrition, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.

²Department of Nutrition and Foodswervice Management, Paichai University, Daejeon, Korea.

Corresponding author: Si-Hyun Ryu. Department of Nutrition and Foodservice Management, Paichai University, 155-40 Baejae-ro, Seo-gu, Daejeon 302-735, Korea. Tel: (042) 520-5907, Fax: (070) 4369-1778, ryush@pcu.ac.kr

Received 2014 June 19; Revised 2014 August 12; Accepted 2014 August 26.

Abstract

Objectives

This study was conducted to investigate Chinese female marriage immigrants' dietary life after immigration to Korea, focusing on comparison between Han-Chinese (traditional Chinese) and Korean-Chinese (Chinese of Korean descent).

Methods

An in-person survey was conducted with women married to Korean men, having one child or more aged 1-6 years old, and having resided in Korea for at least one year before the survey. The data were collected from the 309 respondents comprising 151 Han-Chinese and 158 Korean-Chinese in the summer of 2013.

Results

Overall, there was no significant difference in dietary practice, dietary acculturation, dietary behavior, dietary habits, and food intake between the Han-Chinese and the Korean-Chinese respondents. Over 50% of the respondents ate Korean food every day. The overall level of dietary acculturation was about 3.5 out of 5 points. The average score of healthy dietary behavior was a little bit higher than 3 out of 5 points. Approximately 3/4 of the respondents showed increasing frequency of eating out. The respondents reporting increase food diversity were over 70%. Decreased frequency of skipping meal was about 60% of the respondents. Over 50% of the respondents showed increasing consumption of Kimchi, vegetables, fruit, and meat.

Conclusions

Dietary life of Korean-Chinese female marriage immigrants was similar to that of Han-Chinese female marriage immigrants after immigration to Korea. The results from this study suggest that not only Han-Chinese but also Korean-Chinese should be targeted in various diet-related acculturation support programs as important multicultural populations in Korea.

Keywords: Chinese female immigrants; dietary life; dietary acculturation; dietary habit; food intake

Notes

This research was supported by Multicultural Human Ecology Center, Research Institute of Human Ecology, Seoul National University.

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Article information Continued

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.

Funded by : Multicultural Human Ecology Center, Research Institute of Human Ecology, Seoul National University

Table 1

The general characteristics of the respondents

1) p-value by chi-square test

2) N (%)

Table 2

The dietary practice of Chinese female marriage immigrants in Korea

1) p-value by chi-square test

2) N (%)

3) Community / Internet

4) Price / Korean-style

Table 3

The dietary acculturation level of Chinese female marriage immigrants in Korea

1) p-value by chi-square test

2) 5 point scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree

3) Mean ± SD

Table 4

The perception on Korean food of Chinese female marriage immigrants in Korea

1) p-value by chi-square test

2) 5 point scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree

3) Mean ± SD

Table 5

The healthy dietary behavior of Chinese female marriage immigrants in Korea

1) p-value by chi-square test

2) 5 point scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree

3) Mean ± SD

4) Reverse coding

Table 6

Chinese female marriage immigrants' changes in dietary habits after immigration to Korea

1) p-value by chi-square test

2) N (%)

3) 33% of the cells had expected counts of less than 5. Therefore "no change" and "decrease" response categories were combined into a single category for chi-square test.

Table 7

Chinese female marriage immigrants' change in food intake after immigration to Korea