Which Consumers are Least Likely to Have a Balanced Diet in Japan?

Abstract

There have been only a few large-scale nationwide studies regarding the frequency of eating a balanced diet consisting of staple food, the main dish, and side dishes in Japan. Therefore, this study aimed to clarify factors affecting the frequency of eating a balanced meal that consists of staple food, the main dish, and side dishes twice a day. We analyzed the secondary data of 13,772 responses from the 7-year pooled cross-sectional data of the nationwide Surveys of Attitudes toward Shokuiku (Food and Nutrition Education) by the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan. Ordered logit regression was used to find factors affecting the frequency of having a balanced diet. Our estimation results suggested that gender, age, cohabitation, eating meals with family, subjective economic status, and residential area could be factors affecting the probability of having balanced meals every day. In conclusion, single men in their 20s-50s, single men in their 80s, older male adults living but not eating together with family, single women in their 20s-30s, and individuals with low economic status were identified as high-risk groups who do not have a balanced diet in Japan. Moreover, we found that the government health promotion program called Kenko Nippon 2013 (Health Japan 21, the second term) did not improve the dietary behavior of the consumer in Japan.

Effects of Childhood Nutrition Education from School and Family on Eating Habits of Japanese Adults

“…By doing so, nutrition education can be more effective in emphasizing the importance of family eating and healthy eating to not only students, but also their family members. Moreover, instead of only focusing on the nutrition education from school and the instructors, providing more opportunities for family events related to food production, cooking, or eating would promote participation of family members in nutrition education [20]. The successful implementation of such policies would require close cooperation among various interested parties, such as local farmers, local governments, and family members.…”

“…It also includes demographic information such as age, gender, marriage status, number of household members, occupations, and regions. The data are not longitudinal and there are limitations in analyzing the causality, but the data provide credible answers for quantitative analysis as professional staffs conduct face-to-face interviews with the respondents [20].…”

“…Following previous studies on nutrition education and eating behaviors [24,25], a logistic regression model was adopted to predict the effects of nutrition education on the binomial dependent variable of attitude towards nutrition education. In addition, an ordered logistic regression model [20] was adopted to predict the effects of nutrition education on the ordinal dependent variable of attitude towards balanced eating behaviors. The issue of multicollinearity among the explanatory variables was modest (vif = 2.76).…”

The Mediating Role of Attitude To Physical Activity in the Relationship Between E-Health Literacy and Obesity Awareness

“…The potential factors in uencing and causing obesity are pretty diverse. Several factors cause obesity, including decreased physical activity, short sleep duration, increased television viewing time [7], an unbalanced diet, socio-economic status, gender [8], education level, stress/depression intensity, annual household income [9], smoking and alcohol consumption, bad habits [10], and biological factors such as genetics, prenatal determinants, pregnancy and menopause [11]. In order to reduce the prevalence of obesity, individuals' levels of knowledge about obesity, their attitudes toward it, and their awareness of obesity should be considered [12].…”

Effect of Mid-Adolescent Dietary Practices on Eating Behaviors and Attitudes in Adulthood

“…As observed in other countries, previous empirical cross-sectional studies in Japan have pointed out many factors affecting adult eating behaviors. These include differences in dietary awareness, and food choices, sex [ 16 , 17 , 18 ], age [ 17 , 18 , 19 ], family structure [ 16 , 18 , 19 ], socioeconomic status [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ], eating with family [ 18 ], mental stress [ 24 ], mindfulness [ 25 ], food/eating literacy [ 26 ], accessibility to food outlets [ 27 , 28 ], and mobility restriction due to the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic [ 29 , 30 ].…”