Examination about the Television's Role of Nutrition Education through Content Analysis of Nutrition-related Programs

Lee, Joung Won; Lee, Bokyung

Abstract

In order to examine the television(TV)'s role of nutrition education and the nutritional interests and problems of the general public in the 1990s, a comtents analysis was done on two nutrition-related TV programs, a regular round-table talk show and a newscast. Broadcast from January 1993 to July 1997 and from January 1997 to July f1997, respectively. Nutrition-related information was classified into five categories. Food and nutrient(39.5%) and diseases(34.7%) were most frequently telecasted, which were followed by food habits and general health(13.0%), traditional dishes and cookery(8.2%), and food sanitation and safety(4.6%). In becoming the latest year, some trends in the issues displayed increased telecasts about disease, dish and cookery, and food safety, while the telecasting of food and nutrient decreased. The contents about the relations hip between life-style(including diet) and chronic degenerative diseases and the importance of balanced diets and regualr meals for health promotion became particularly emphasized. Overall, two TV programs provided the public with positive, practical, and sometimes practive nutrition education messages for improving eating life and health care. They also raised the public's awareness of the nutritional importance of Korean staple foods such as rice, kimchi, seaweed, and soysauce, and they sometimes satified the audience's curiosities by introducing Korean food culture or foods of Buddhist priests. When the accident of food toxicity occurred concrete information about how to manage it was rapidly given to the public. In addition they played a role in food balance policy by telecasting over-product foods such as garlic and onion. However some negative points appeared. Telecasts on milk and its products and diabetes mellitus showed the least frequently. These shows should be broadcast more often considering the present nutrition and health problems in Korea. Some functions or effects of foods were mostly explained by only physicians of Chinese medicine. Sometimes misinformed, unclear, overemphasized, biased, or unfair information was televised to the public. If these problems could be solved through the sincere cooperation between nutrition faculty and TV produces, become televison could a more complete and effective medium for educating the public about nutrition.