Abstract
The principal objective of this study was to assess the current status of elementary students' intake of dietary supplements, in an effort to diagnose any overnutrition, and to employ the results as basic data for the establishment of a balanced nutritional education. A survey was conducted by using a questionnaire administered to 734 elementary students’ parents in Seoul, and the analyzed results were as follows: Most parents believed that their nutritional knowledge was better than the norm(91.5%). However, almost half of the parents(49.2%) were feeding certain dietary supplements to their children, despite their perception that their children were already healthy, and were not recognizing any significant beneficial effects from those supplements. The most popular dietary supplements being fed were vitamin complexes. The majority of children took at least one type of dietary supplements at a monthly cost of approximately 10,000${\sim}$30,000 won. These results revealed the potential for overnutrition in some of the elementary students as the result of dietary supplement intake; thus, further studies involving assessments of risk for dietary supplement overconsumption in children and proper dietary education for the parents are suggested.
