[in Japanese]

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We studied parent' awareness of dietary habit for preventing of tooth caries and their attitude toward between-meals eating by children by conducting a questionnaire survey among 404 kindergartners' parents.
The prevention of children's tooth caries was found to involve far more attention to dental hygiene than to dietary habits.
Fifty five percent of parents answered that children's tooth caries is preventable, 3% that it is not and 42% that it may be preventable. Those “affirmative” parents had a high degree of knowledge about dietary habits for preventing tooth caries. On the other hand, the parents of children with tooth decay believed tooth caries not to be preventable because of weak teeth and had little knowledge about how to prevent tooth caries by appropriate dietary habits.
The children with tooth decay had free access to snacks and soft drinks, and went shopping for these between-meals whenever they wanted.

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We analyzed the relationships between the use of nutrition labeling and dietary knowledge, attitude and behavior in order to find the possibility for nutrition education of high school students by nutrition labeling. The principal that was applied is based on the Health Belief Model (Becker et al.) and Theoretical Model for the Ecology of Humans and Food in the Community (M. Adachi).
A questionnaire survey was conducted in 1996 on 335 high school students in Nagoya. The characteristics of food purchasing behavior involved frequent use of convenience stores and the consumption of canned drinks. Eighty six point eight percent of students knew about nutrition labeling, 26.6% of them made use of nutrition labeling, 40.2% of students couldn't understand it (very much/at all), 28.6% judged it (very/fairly) troublesome, and 65.4% didn't pay attention (very much/at all) to nutrition at meals.
The most positive attitude to the use of nutrition labeling was interest in it, and the most negative attitude was that it is troublesome. Those who used nutrition labeling had significantly less trouble and were more interested in it than those who didn't.
The results provide fair support to the Health Belief Model for assessing the influence of dietary knowledge, attitude and behavior on the use of nutrition labeling.

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We studied the effect of oral energy intake on the nutritional status of forty seven hospitalized patients (18 with liver cirrhosis, 15 with gastro-esophageal diseases, 5 with pancreatic diseases, and 9 with intestinal diseases). In those patients without liver cirrhosis, there was a significant correlation between the oral energy intake and both BMI (r=0.465, p<0.05) and the serum albumin level (r=0.687, p<0.001). In those patients with liver cirrhosis, the oral energy intake did not reflect the nutritional status. These results suggest that the oral energy intake could be a useful index for the nutritional assessment of patients not suffering from liver cirrhosis and that additional factors besides energy intake have to be considered for malnutrition in patients with liver cirrhosis.

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We investigated the relative metabolic rate (RMR) and energy expenditure (EE) during 5 types of karate training: basic techniques without (S-Basics) and with (M-Basics) movements, sparring techniques without (TECH I) and with (TECH II) an opponent, and kata. Seven male first degree black belt practitioners practiced S-Basics for 15 minutes, M-Basics for 10 minutes, TECH I for 10 minutes, TECH II for 15 minutes, and kata for 20 minutes. The mean RMR and EE values for the entire 70-minute workout were 8.1±1.3 and 0.129±0.010kcal/kg/min. This mean RMR value slightly above the equivalent values reported for judo and kendo training. Based on recommended dietary allowances for the Japanese, the calculated index of daily physical activity was 1.58, which is classified as a “heavy” level of physical activity. The calculated energy requirement when the level of physical activity is classified as heavy (4, 329±407kcal) is 10% less than the energy requirement (4, 760±448kcal) calculated from the energy expended during karate training.

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[in Japanese]

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