This study was intended to evaluate the overall effects of nutritional education on adults having two or more symptoms of chronic degenerative disease. A nine week nutritional education program was provided for 65 adults with chronic diseases. We assessed the changes in dietary knowledge, eating behavior and socio-psychological factors. When we evaluated the nutrient intakes of the subjects, their energy intake was 79.4% of the Korean Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA). Their dietary intake of other nutrients was also below the RDA level except for Vitamin C. Their knowledge of dietary therapy was slightly improved after the implementing of nutritional education. The dietary behavior of 'night snacks before sleep' was significantly improved. While the overall fear due to disease was significantly increased, self-efficacy was not improved. Self-efficacy for eating "three regular meals" and "choosing fruit, vegetable and grain" were significantly decreased. Family support for "buying food which is good for my health" was also significantly increased, whereas "advises me to eat appropriate foods for health" was decreased. Biochemical analysis indicated that blood levels of triglyceride, cholesterol and blood pressure improved after nutrition education. Therefore, we concluded that nutritional education program for people with chronic degenerative diseases could change the diet therapy knowledge, dietary behavior, and the fear due to disease, support from family and behavior intention toward the direction to improve the chronic disease condition. However, it did not improve self-efficacy. Our study also indicated that nutritional education strategies to improve self-efficacy should be an important aspect in a long term education plan for patients to establish desirable eating habits.
The study was curried out to collect information to establish a framework for nutrition education for the prevention of chronic degenerative disease. We analyzed differences in diet quality, food habits and health status of workers by work condition. Anthrometric parameters of height, weight and body fat were measured and biochemical parameters including glucose, total cholesterol, GOT, GPT and hemoglobin were determinded for 194 subjects. To assess the nutrient intake and diet quality of workers, dietary intake was measured by the day 24-hour recall method, Average daily nutrient intake, except for phos-phorous and vitamin C was lower than Korean RDA. The obesity related behavior score was significantly better in laborers than in office workers, while chronic degenerative diseases related to food habit score was significantly better in laborers than in office workers, while chronic degenerative diseases related to the food habit score was beet in offices workers than in laborers. Blood pressure, blood glucose levels were significantly higher in laborer than in office workers. Dietary variety score (DVS) food composition group score(FCGS), mean adequacy ratio(MAR) of office worker were better than those of labor workers. When diet quality was evaluated by FCGS(food composition group score) 16.0% of the subjects acquired 5 points and 14.4% of the subjects acquired 2 points. MAR and INQ showed a significantly positive correlation with DVS and FCGS . This results indicated that the onset possibility of hypertension and diabetes mellitus among chronic degenerative disease was higher in laborers than in office workers, while the onset possibility of obesity was higher in office workers than in laborers. In conclusion the overall diet quality of office workers is betters than that of laborers, therefore, nutrition education for prevention of chronic degenerative disease of industrial workers needs to be more focused on the improvement of the health status of laborers.