Abstract
In the eating habits support of patients with food allergy, a role of the dietitian is expected, but the nutritional education method has not been established yet. Therefore, we performed questionnaire-based survey for parents of food allergic children and the non-food allergic children (about eating habits at home and outside, stress of mothers, understanding degrees on the disease by surrounding people, and the correspondence of kindergarten and school) to determine the problems that they faced in everyday life and then we tried to clarify the main nutritional education item. The subjects were 286 food allergic children and 258 non-food allergic children as a total of 544. It was 21.7% of non-food allergic children and 40.1% of food allergic children who had a separate meal menu from that of their families. The parents of 67.5% of non-food allergic children and 96.8% of food allergic children paid attention carefully to food materials. The parents of 40.1% of food allergic children felt an economic burden, and 54.1% of them couldn't go out for eating. Numerousness of the number of the removal food items promoted the burden. Also, the parents of 28.2% of food allergic children and 4.6% of non-food allergic children were dissatisfied with lunch provided by kindergartens or schools and correspondence of the dietitians. Dietitians should cooperate with physicians through the support (nutritional education) of food allergy patients to reduce these burden.
