Abstract

School Lunch Program (SLP) should provide adequate and qualitative nutritional food for student's growth and proper food habit. With this fact, this study divided 524 middle school students who resided in Jeonju, Jellabukdo into two groups, SLP or non SLP according to whether they were provided SLP or not. Then this research estimate each group's nutritional knowledge, nutritional attitude, dietary behavior, balance of three meals, and health checking their clinical symptom to investigate the effects of the SLP. This research applied anthropometric data, questionnaires and food intake data using 24 hours recall method. Each group's age average was same as 14.0 years old respectively. The average score of nutritional knowledge and condition of balance of lunch were significantly higher in SLP group than those of non-SLP group, although, there were no significant differences in the scores of nutritional attitude, dietary behavior, and balance of breakfast and dinner within both groups. This research showed that SLP had positive role on nutritional knowledge and balanced lunch. However, current SLP is not sufficient to cause change the nutritional attitude and dietary behavior. To make more applicable and effective result of SLP leading nutritional attitude changes and development of appropriate dietary behavior, certain level of nutritional education to the student may be important.

• Keywords: school lunch program; nutritional knowledge; nutritional attitude; dietary behavior