The study examined the relationship between eating with others among elderly living alone and their positive food behavior and food related attitude. The study is on the first step to develop a new scale of the?gpositiveness?hof food behavior and food related attitude as a new index of QOL of the elderly. Data on 102 subjects living alone, 35 males and 67 females, in a survey on food behavior among the elderly, conducted in Japan in 1990, were analyzed. Results were as follows:1. Score of eating with others (Score) were calculated based on the frequency of 3 occasions of eating with others: eating with their children, eating with relatives and/or friends, and eating on the occasion of social activities. Subjects were divided into a high score group (37 persons), a medium score group (33), and a low score group (32).2. In comparison with the low score group, the high score group showed positive food behaviors for all 3 steps: preparation of meals, eating meals, and exchanging foods and information on food and nutrition. The high score group had good food frequency and they also showed positive attitudes for social contacts on food .3. Based on the degree of the?gpositiveness?hof food behavior and food related attitude, a new scale, Positive Score on Food Behavior (PSFB), was devised for trial .The PSFB is divided into 2 sub-scales: one is the Score on social contacts on food (Social PSFB), such as preparation meals on social occasion, and the other was the Score on personal food behavior (Personal PSFB), such as preparation of meals for themselves. Multiple regression analysis showed that the Score significantly correlatedwith PSFB and the Social PSFB. But there was not significant correlation between the Score and the Personal PSFB. The results suggested that there is the necessity to develop a new scale such as PSFB including social and personal aspects of food behavior and food related attitude and that the new scale will have some possibilities to evaluate QOL of the elderly from the view point of the ecology of human and food.
