This article investigates the impact of the falling birth rate, aging population, global warming, and other demographic and weather factors on Japanese food demand. The linear approximate quadratic almost idealdemand system, which is closed under unit scaling even with additional regressors in it and is more flexible in expenditure variations than the popular linear approximate almost ideal demand system, is applied to pseudo panel data per household on 12 food groups in 49 cities for the period January 2000 through December 2008. The decreasing number of children increases the demand for fish, vegetables, and alcohol and decreases that for dairy products, cakes, and eating out. The aging population increases the demand for fish, dairy products, vegetables, and fruit and decreases that for meat and eating out. Global warming, whose impact is estimated monthly, increases the demand for beverages throughout the year and decreases that for fish and meat in all but one month.

View full abstract

Live and frozen short-neck clams stored at -20℃ for 2 weeks were cooked in boiling water, and the extractive components of each hot-water extract and cooked soft parts were examined. The levels of total free aminoacids, total ATP and related compounds, and succinic acid in the hot-water extracts prepared from the live and frozen samples were not significantly different, whereas the levels of adenosine 5’-monophosphate (AMP), inosine 5’-monophosphate (IMP) and inosine in the extract of the frozen samples were higher than those from the live samples. A sensory evaluation revealed that the extract of frozen samples was stronger in umami and overall preference and weaker in fishy odor than that of the live samples.The state of shell-opening during cooking of the frozen short-neck clam was also investigated. Samples stored for 2 weeks at -20℃ and -40℃, placed in water and then brought to the boil respectively resulted in17% and 27% giving complete shell-opening. However, 66% of the frozen samples placed in boiling water gave complete shell-opening, irrespective of the temperature and duration of freezing.(Received August 5. 2010: Accepted in revised form February 5. 2011)

View full abstract

This study focuses on the ability to cooperate in solving diverse and complicated problems in our daily lives. It also aims to clarify the ability to cooperate, which is required for home economics education. At a fundamental level, this paper aims to make clear the dynamic process of developing national registered dietitians’ ability to cooperate and its influential factors in order to make suggestions with regard to home economics education. Many national registered dietitians have come from the faculty of home economics.They work in medical institutions that have called for the ability to cooperate, particularly through revision of the Nutritionists Law and revision of medical fees for nutrition therapy, and they work in cooperation with people like doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc. Therefore this study focuses on the job classification of national registered dietitians in medical institutions.Data was obtained about cooperative activities through interviews with ten national registered dietitians with considerable work experience in medical institutions. The data was qualitatively analyzed by using the modified grounded theory approach.Below is a summary of my findings:(1) Twenty-five concepts and five categories classified according to conceptual meaning were createdfrom the data.(2) The process of developing national registered dietitians’ cooperation consists of two types of effort: inside and outside their place of work. Furthermore, these two types of effort were interrelatedand developed to improve development cooperation.(3) There are three factors that control the quality of cooperation：set- up cooperation , professional knowledge and skills, and the ability to manage synthetically.

View full abstract

This study focuses on sweating reactions in the lower body, which is one factor affecting discomfort in the sitting position. We first investigated sweating distribution in 13 sites on the lower body in 5 young women in an environment of 35℃ and 50% relative humidity. There was a general tendency for the volume of sweat from the lower body to increase near the trunk. We then changed the positions of 8 young women from standing (a) to sitting to standing (b) in an environment of 35℃ and 50% relative humidity, and measured their sweat rates at 5 sites. Sweat rates differed markedly, depending on the postural changes: standing (a) → sitting, -20 to -30%; sitting → standing (b), +45 to +70%. Sweat rates on the buttocks were low compared with neighboring areas, and were extremely low when the subjects were seated.

View full abstract

A questionnaire survey was conducted in 2006, following previous surveys in 1990, 1996 and 2001, to ascertain the changing food preferences for seafood, meat and dairy products of 1342 children attending day nurseries in 17 Japanese cities. The proportions of children who liked seafood, meat and dairy products in the2006 survey were 73.1%, 73.6% and 77.0%, the figures for seafood and meat being no different among coastal, urban and inland dwellers. Although the proportion of children who liked seafood was not influenced by age, the proportion who liked meat increased with age. The children’s preferences for seafood and meat was influenced by their parents’ own preferences (p<0.01). The proportions of children who liked baked (87.3%) and raw seafood (62.8%) were higher than the figures in previous surveys, while the proportion of children who liked deep-fried seafood in 2006 (36.5%) was 15% lower than that in 1990. Of the 18 seafoods surveyed, the preferences were for shrimp (73.9%), salmon (73.7%) and tuna (68.1%). There was a stronger preference expressed in 2006 than that in previous surveys for 13 of the 18 seafoods. The results of the survey indicate that regional differences have decreased in the preferred seafoods and cooking methods.

View full abstract