Abstract

This study was undertaken to develop and evaluate a nutrition education program with internet for students. A survey was conducted to find out needs for nutrition education program with 430 college or high school student in October, 1997. Eighty four point eight percent of female and 36.0% of male students had a plan to reduce their weight in a near future. Forty four point four percent of subjects obtained information about weight control from mass media, 28.6% of subjects obtained from their neighbor's recommendation. The information wanted to know were high-calorie foods, answered by 42.1% of females, and calorie expenditure of exercise, answered by 31.9% of males. The obese group showed higher preferrence to sweet foods, salty foods, hot foods, convenience foods, processed foods, animal foods, fried and oily foods, and eating-out than normal group(p<0.05). The obese group also showed a tendency of bad food habits, low intake of seaweeds, high intakes of animal fat, cholesterol-rich foods and salty foods. Amount of food intakes was inappropriate in obese group. An internet program for nutrition education was developed using the results of the survey and juvenile nutrition programs. The program consisted of 6 steps ; step 1 was to check one's physical status, step 2 was explanation about good food habits, step 3 was about food management, step 4 was methods of exercise for health, step 5 included how to maintain ideal weight, and step 6 was related-internet site. Pre-education test and post-education test was conducted to evaluate the nutrition education through internet. The score of nutrition knowledge increased from 74.2+/-7.4 to 77.2+/-9.6. The score of food attuitude did not change. The subjects wanted more information about nutrition from internet. Therefore, internet program of nutrition education with specific and interesting topics should be developed more.

• Keywords: nutrition education; food habits; internet; weight control