To determine weaning practices and food habits of pre-school children in Gunee county, Kyung Buk province, one of the rural health demonstration project areas of KHDL a study was conducted of 171 children ranging in age from one to six years old, from December 18 to 22, 1979. Findings are summarized as follows:
1. Weaning- practice
65.3% of the children were breast-fed. The motive for bottle or combined feeding of cow´s milk and cereal was mostly the insufficient secretion of breast milk to feed the baby. Only 26. 1 % of the children began to be fed supplementary foods before the age of 6 months. The supplementary food used most frequently by the majority of children at the beginning of weaning was plain cooked rice; rarely special preparations, or different from the foods eaten by the family. Hence, they were offered primarily when the child was able to consume food in its usual form, rather than in the form of a. strained or mashed weaning food. Only 32.9% of -the children completely terminated breast feeding within 1.2 months, although some continued until the child was over 2 years old, or even 3. As for methods of stopping breast feeding, 47.9,°0 of the children were naturally terminated while 42.3°% were forced to terminate by the application of medicines such as bitter-tasting antibiotics, aspirin. mercurochrome, iodine tincture, antiphlamine, or analgestic spray to the mother´s nipples. 2. Food habits
On the average, 38.6% of the children skipped meals more than once during the survey period. It was found that 53.3% of the 6-year-old group missed meals more than once. Among those children who missed meals, 37. 1 % skipped one meal daily; 35. 5% skipped one meal in three days and other skipped one meal in a week because of various reasons such as lack of appetite; illness; over eating of snacks before meal time too much enthusiasm for playing with friends-, lack of side dishes; too early bed; and mother too busy working.
The food which children liked best was fruit. In general, egg, laver , summer corn, cucumber, melon,apple, potato sweet ;potato And plain cooked :nice were liked. Disliked foods were tomato, cooked rice with beans, and strongly flavored vegetables. such as green onion, green pepper and Korean celery. Items which children never ate before were beef liver and intestine, mushroom, meat dumpling, taro, margarine, and dried white bait fish. The snack most frequently given to these children was apple, which is the most popular local fruit, although rice cake and maltose candy were often given. The results indicate a need for nutrition and hygiene intervention to improve the weaning practice and food habits of young children of aural area through the community nutrition education.
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