The Study of Awareness and Practice of Korean Dietitians in Food Exchange Lists, Serving Size and Dietary Guidelines

Lee, Yung Nam; Roh, Sung Yoon

Abstract

Dietitians in various fields have used food exchange lists for food preparations. However ie seems that the present food exchange lists are complicated, thus they cause many problems for dietitians to use in the fields. Therefore this study evaluated to the extent of awareness and utilizations of KDA food exchange lists in dietitians and also collected dietitian's opinions for revising food exchange lists such as serving size, serving calories, and for unifying food guidelines and dietary and dietary guidelines for Korean to one simple guideline. 192 dietitians who presently work in urban and rural areas were recruited and data based on survey were collected. As results, most of dietitians(87.5%) knew well about food exchange lists, but only 7.8% of them always would use food exchange lists for menu planing, 56.3% of dietitians did not use it at all and 34.4% occasionally use it. And 88.0% of dietitians wanted to revise food exchange lists totally or partially, 69.8% of dietitians hoped to amend various calories per one serving in food exchange lists to one serving calorie. The desirable on serving calorie was selected as 100kcal(51%) or 50kcal(38%) by dietitians. The dietitians in this study understood very well dietary guidelines(86.5%) and food guidelines(88.5%) for Korean, and 66.1% dietitians wanted to unify both guidelines. In case of unification of guidelines, dietitians answered that 7~8 items(30%) or 5~6 items(27%) should be included in guideline. In the question about reference value for daily allowance, most dietitians(56%) satisfied with the present various reference values for various generation while 28% of dietitians wanted to change to have one reference value (standard with 2000kcal, adult female). This study will provide basic informations for revising or adjustment of food exchange list and dietary or food guidelines for Korean.