A study on eating behavior and physical.mental health of the Korean elderly

한국노인의 식생활 양상과 신체적. 정신적 건강에 관한 조사연구 -서울지역을 중심으로-

The purpose of this study was to investigate relationship between the eating behavior, physical and mental health. For this purpose, the data was collected by using questionnaires and intervews distibuted to 293 the elderly residing in Seoul. This study was designed to observe the eating behavior(eating habit, healthy food preference, smoking, drinking), physical health(weight, height, desease and heath of the current and past, self-awareness of the health) and mental health(weight, height, desease and heath of the current and the past, self-awareness of the health) and mental health(meeting, excursion, exercise, service, activi ty, depression). The major results are: 1. The heathy elderly had the better eating habit and the non healthy tried to stop smoking and drinking for their own health. 2. There were many elderly with neuralgia and arthralgia, especially women were worse. The sleep disorder related to many disease. When physical health was bad, so was mental health. 3. More than 50 percentage of subjects had light depression, especially women and the elderly at 60-75age were more serious. The depressive elderly had no meetings, excursion, exercise, service activity and showed a hight tendency for under-weight or obesity. In conclusion, the relationship between the eating behavior and physical and mental health wa very significant, so it was necessary to provide comfortable living condition to the elderly.