Abstract

School lunch programs at middle schools have increased in quantity. However, the quality of them is in fact not enough to reach the satisfactory standard, especially in the aspect of environment of school meals. It is true that there seems to be little attention to the environment. In this study, degree of satisfaction about school lunch program was surveyed for students in one middle school. Focus of survey was sanitary condition about the dining room and classroom where they have lunch. First, in order to investigate the degree of satisfaction about their dining place, questionnaire was sent out to the students at one middle school in Seoul. Questionnaire was made with reference to previous research. Second, for the study on environmental sanitation, dropping bacteria (general bacteria) is measured in three parts of dining place (entrance, serving table, dining table). Petriplate film was exposed to the responsible places for 15 minutes and then cultivated at the temperature of 32degrees C for 48 hours before counting the number of bacteria formed. For the statistical analysis, SPSS 12.0 was used. The results of the study show that students had more satisfaction in dining room service than in classroom service. Important factors for the meal program such as "taste of food", "amount of food per student", "state of keeping warm", "appearance of food", "diversity of menu", and "kindliness of feeding staff" had more points in dining room than in classroom. For the environmental and sanitary aspect, the result of dropping bacteria (general bacteria) in dining room and classroom showed that table (5.00) and fooddistribution corner (8.67) of dining room were cleaner than those of classroom (P < 0.05). Making a good environment for school feeding will have a positive effect on the improvement of satisfaction and sanitation of school feeding. There should be expansion of dining room service for the students.

• Keywords: school lunch program; degree of satisfaction; dining room service; classroom service; environmental sanitary condition