A study of elementary school children´s growth pattern for 4 years and related food habits was carried out on 765, 6th grade children living in Daejeon in June, 1993. The results were as follows:
1. Each percentile values of weight-for-age and height-for-age of surveyed children were larger than those of 1985 Korean Growth Standard.
2. Average incremental heights of the children of 5 BMI group were similar to each other but those of weight were different a lot. The higher the BMI group, the larger the incremental weight, which shows increasing prevalence of obesity.
3. 70.2% of the children of BMI group 1 (n=74) at 2nd grade were still in group 1 or 2 at 6th grade and 79.4% of the children of BMI group 5 (n=73) at 2nd grade were still in BMI group 4 or 5 at 6th grade.
4. Although children generally were aware of their physical fitness(p<0.0001), both of obese children and
their mothers were not concerned about changing their food habits such as balanced food intake, regular meal
intake, avoiding instant food, or regular exercise except reducing snack ´after supper(p<0.0001).
5. Children in group 5 ate more rice at supper(p<0.05) and during a whole day (p<0.0001) than those in
group 1 but children in group 1 ate more meat than those in group 5 (p<0.01).
These results of showing difficulties in weight control or little concerns about it reassert the importance of nutrition education focusing on weight control of obese or overweight children and their mothers who
cannot change their food habits due to insufficient nutrition information or deficient awareness of negative health effects of overweight.
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