Korean Elementary School Students’ recognition, preference and nutrition knowledge on seafood

Abstract

In order to provide information on the efficient utilization of nutritious seafood in school food service, this cross‐sectional study was conducted using a questionnaire. The subjects of this study were 493 fifth‐ and sixth‐grade elementary school students in Incheon metropolitan city, Korea. Data were analyzed with SPSS 12.0 program. As for preference for seafood in school food service, 79.9% of the students had a moderate or higher preference. The boys had significantly greater preference for seafood compared to the girls(p<0.001). As for the reason of preference for seafood in school food service, most of the boys and girls answered good taste. As to the reason of disliking seafood in school food service, there was no significant difference between genders. But many of the boys answered that the types of seafood in school food service weren't what they liked and many of the girls answered that they didn't like the taste and smell of seafood in school food service. As for reason why they should eat seafood, most of the boys and girls answered excellent nutrition. As for nutrition knowledge on seafood, the boys(8.13) showed a significantly higher knowledge score compared to the girls(7.54)(p<0.05). Their favorite seafood was dried laver regardless of gender, followed by shrimp, blue crab, squid and tuna, and their unfavorite seafood was Alaska pollack, followed by oyster, green laver and mussel. In case of seafood cooked in different ways, most of the boys and girls preferred fried seafood, boiled rice with seafood, noodles with seafood, porridge with seafood, panbroiled seafood and Korean Jeon, and they didn't prefer soup and stew with seafood, baked and boiled seafood, seasoned seafood and salted seafood. Therefore, it is required to study how to cook seafood in a way preferred by Korean students to let them eat more seafood in school food service.