Diet-related Behaviors, Perception and Food Preferences of Multicultural Families with Vietnamese Wives

베트남 결혼이주여성이 속한 다문화가정의 식생활 관련 행태, 인식 및 선호음식 양상 분석

The Korean society has gone through a dramatic change in its population, with rapidly increasing number of multicultural families through international marriages since 1990s. This study investigated the differences between multicultural families and Korean families in three areas related to dietary behaviors: diet-related behaviors and perception, and food preferences. A cross-sectional analysis was performed in 500 Koreans from Korean families and 104 couples from the multicultural families with Vietnamese wives. More subjects from multicultural families grew up in the countryside, received less education and also had lower income than the subjects from Korean families. Multicultural families ate traditional Korean meals more often at home and dined out less often than Korean families. The multicultural families focused more attention on nutritional aspects of their diets than Korean families. The Vietnamese wives in multicultural families favored Vietnamese foods but they rarely ate those foods in Korea despite an easy accessibility to Vietnamese ingredients. In conclusion, the multicultural families had more traditional Korean dietary patterns than Korean families, which could have been influenced by their socioeconomic factors. Further research with a quantitative analysis is needed in future studies to understand the effect of dietary patterns on nutritional status and quality of life in multicultural and Korean families.