Health‐related life style and health condition related to skipping breakfast in Korean elementary school students

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate health‐related life style and health condition related to skipping breakfast among 6th grade elementary school students in Korea. A cross‐sectional survey was carried out consisting of 238 6th grade elementary school students in the Daejeon metropolitan city located in middle of Korea. In an anthropometric study of subjects, body weight and BMI increased with skipping‐breakfast rates in females. As for self‐recognition regarding body weight by the frequency of eating breakfast, the more subjects who considered high weight, the lower the frequency of eating breakfast. Although self‐reported diseases were not significantly (p>0.05) related with skipping‐breakfast, anemia (22.2%) was found to be related to subjects with a breakfast eating frequency of 0‐2 times/week. Higher sleeping time and lower stress were significantly related with a higher eating‐breakfast rate (p>0.05). Eating‐breakfast rate significantly affected school grades and friend relationships (p<0.05). The results showed a high skipping‐breakfast rate in Korean elementary school students in spite of the importance of eating breakfast. Nutrition education for eating breakfast and balanced diet is necessary to reduce skipping breakfast. Thus eating breakfast with family members, maintaining a healthy life style, and creative menu development to increase appetite for breakfast would be helpful to decrease the tendency of some students to skip breakfast.