Smoking Status and Dietary Habit of High School Students in Kyunggi Area

경기일부지역 고등학생의 흡연실태와 식습관

There are many concerns about the smoking among adolescents. Smoking status, smoking habit and dietary habit of high school students were studied using anonymous questionnaires. One hundred fifteen of 380 students(30.3%) have experienced smoking and 58.3% of them initiated it in the middle school, mostly because of the curiosity. The most plausible reasons for smoking were for stress reduction and feel bored. The students who smoked cigarettes were not likely to eat properly and their dietary habits were generally inadequate. The smoking group had less consideration of food balance, more skipping breakfast, more irregular meal time, less snack, and less frequent intake of vegetables. Also one-day dietary records obtained from 24hr recall showed less diverse food intake in smoking students. Considering the risk of poor eating behavior in smoking, nutritional care should be taken to emphasize as well as the smoking prevention and health programs, and more attention needs to be given to the relationship between smoking and the attitude and the behavior of smoking students toward their health, including proper eating habits. Since the results revealed that the majority of smoking students had previously attempted or thought about quitting to smoke, proper support programs that are more comprehensive and not temporal need to be developed.