The Changes and Suggestions in Korean Dietary Guideline

Lee, Young Nam; Kim, Eul Sang

Abstract

The Recommended Dietary Allowances(RDAs, Nutrient standards), dietary guidelines, and food guides, each define aspects for a healthy diet in different ways. The RDA and food guide for Koreans were first established in 1962 by the Food and Nutrition Committee of the Korea FAO Association. The committee released the RDA and suggested ways to intake the recommended nutrients. Every five years, the committee has added more data and released revisions. The latest edition of the RDA is the 6th revision. In the beginning, the concept of basic food groups was emphasized as basic data for planning means based on RDA. In the 5th revision, the basic food groups and dietary guideline for public health from the Ministry of Health and Welfairs(December, 1990) suggests that, 1) Eat a variety of foods with a recommended fat intake equaling or less than 20% of total calories ; 2) Maintain ideal body weight and prevent obesity ; 3) Eat foods low in salt. Salt intake should not exceed 10g ; 4) Do not drink too much ; 5) Eat regularly and enjoy meals. After these guidelines were established, the first nutritonal education efforts guidelines were developed in 1984. Despite broad possibilities for application, they had limited use, mainly as a nutritional assessment and food balance sheet preparation. They were not well utilized in public nutritional education and nutritonal policy through the media because of the weakness of the government's food and nutriton policy. Also a lack of administrative support and dietitians in the health department and administrative organizations was partly to blame. In regard to public health and nutrition status, life expectancy has increased 10 years since the 70's and the elderly population increased threefold in 1995 compared to 1960. The common causes of death in 1996 by 19 Chapters classification, were first disease of the circulatory system ; the second, neoplasms ; the third, external causes fo mortality ; the forth, diseases of the digestive system ; and the fifth, respiratory system diseases, In food intake, grain and complex starch intake has decreased while fruit and animal foods have considerably increased. Therefore, energy from carbohydrates has decreased while energy from protein and fat has increased. Energy intakes from protein, fat and carbohydrates were respectively 12.5, 7.2 and 80.3% in 1969 but 16.1, 19.1 and 64.8% in 1995. 62.9% of the householes had the fat energy less than 20%, while 37.1% had the fat energy above 20%. The only intakes of vitamin A and calcium were below RDA levles. Therefore, nationwide attention should be focused on public nutriton education and public activities with supplementation of the RDAs, according to the food guide and the dietary guideline.