Fifty years have passed since the Japanese School Lunch Law was established in 1954. At this turning point, the central education council proposed a new system to introduce school dietetics teacher.
Unfavorable dietary habits and sedentary lifestyle have been increasing dramatically among the children. It has been demonstrated that the dietary habits will have an effect on life style related diseases on the future life. Nutrition education is, therefore, essential for school children since the quality of nutrition has a direct impact on their growth and development as well as on their nutritional status throughout their life. In response to this, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has strengthened food related guidance in connection with school lunch covering as much as 88%of school children.
The role of the dietetics teachers, who are covering the primary health and nutrition care in school, is to teach how to obtain healthy life and eating behaviors. They are also required to act as educational leaders with special knowledge in nutrition. Furthermore, the teachers who are in the field of nutrition are expected to work as intermediaries between parents, their colleagues in other fields, and health related institutions. They are also expected to play a key role in leading children towards better health administration and improvement in their healthy life style.

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A questionnaire survey of the consciousness of health and dietary style was conducted among 332 males and 477 females in the large cities of Osaka and Kobe per se and their surrounding areas in western Japan from 1999 to 2000.
Many subjects recognized the importance of health and were interested in maintaining good health.The proportion of subjects who had the idea of importance of health increased with aging.Most subjects considered that “health” was equally valuable to “work” . The main sources of the knowledge of health and nutrition were from “TV and radio” and “journals and newspapers” .
Food groups which subjects tried to eat for health were “milk & dairy products”, “colored vegetables”, “fish” and “soy bean & its products” . Most subjects considered that the most important factor for good health was “sleeping time” and “good balanced nutrient”, but not “exercise” . owever, about 50% of both subjects answered “ especially do not exercise” .Both subjects preferred mostly “Japanese-style a table d'hote”, “Japanese noodles” and “western-style a table d'hote” at eatingout. Subjects who recognized the importance of health and were more interested in their health paid more attention to balanced diets, tried to obtain more information concerning health and nutrition and scored higher on the evaluation of their dietary style. Male subjects who scored higher on the evaluation of self-assessments of their dietary style answered less frequency of eating-out and commercial sweets. Most subjects answered the necessity of “strong will to maintain their good health” and “information for food” in order to improve their life style. These results indicate that it is difficult to practice to improve their life style even though many subjects realize the importance of good health.
The support system to encourage people in their healthy daily living habit including food intake and proper amount of exercise is needed.

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Squid is most eaten seafood in Japan.In the spear squid'Yari-ika'(Doryteuthis bleekeri) and the broad-mantle squid'Aori-ika'(_{Sepioteuthis lessoniana}) from the Senzaki Seaport of Nagato City in Yamaguchi Prefecture, the changes in the antioxidative capacity, i. e., the peroxyl radical scavenging capability measured by the luminol chemiluminescence method and K value as one of freshness indicators, were investigated. Based on the K value results, a better freshness of the spear squid was maintained compared with that of the broad-mantle squid. Further, more the antioxidative capacity of the broad-mantle squid preserved in a refrigerator at 4°C had a higher IC₅₀ value than that of the same squid in cool seawater at 4°C, and better than the IC₅₀ values of spear squids preserved at 4°C in air and seawater. However, no difference in the K value of each squid was recognized between the two preservation methods. Therefore, it was found that the broad-mantle squid preserved at 4°C in air increased the antioxidative capacity based on losing freshness.
Changes in antioxidative capacity and K value of squids captured in Yamaguchi prefecture

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We analyzed the leading researches for making the contents of the Food Education clear. The subjects of the survey are 150 cases of these three journals; Journal for the Integrated Study of Dietary Habits, Journal of Home Economics of Japan, and Journal of the Japan Association of Home Economics Education.
As a result, we found out 3 following points.
1. The contents of the Food Education can be classified into 12 items; Dietary Style, Meals, Habits, Tastes, Consciousness, Cooking, Menu, Nutrition, Dietary Actions, Cultures & Traditions of Food, Education and Social Responsibility.
2. We can draw 5 classes of viewpoint regarding mainly Dietary Style from the contents of Chapter 1; Physiological Influences, Psychological Influences, Social Influences, Character Building and consumption-economical.
3. We showed that the consumption-economical viewpoint which thinks much of the Sense of Responsibility of Consumer needs to be more substantial for the Food Education in the future.

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[in Japanese]

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The paper was planned to investigate the effect of dietary fiber insweet potato leaves (SPL) on modulation of blood glucose metabolism in rats. First, diet containing 5% freeze-dried SPL powder was given to the male GK rats aged 6 wks old by meal feeding. After 6 weeks after feeding started, blood glucose and insulin levels in the 5% SPL diet group were significantly reduced compared with those of the control diet group. Effectiveness of SPL on modulation of glucose metabolism in the GK rats might be supported by a significant reduction of blood cholesterol, especially LDLcholesterol.
A soluble dietary fiber (SDF) was extracted from the SPL powder. This substance was found to show high viscosity and to be mainly composed of xylose (34.7%) and uronic acid (38.8% as galacturonic acid) by sugar composition analysis.
An elevation of postprandial blood glucose level in rats given 5.0ml of 20% glucose solution containing 1% SPL-SDF orally was significantly suppressed as compared with that in the control rats given 20% glucose solution only.
The diffusion rate of glucose and the permeation rate of glucose in the cultured Caco-2 cells were both significantly reduced by the addition of appropriate amounts of SPL-SDF comparing to the control, respectively.
These results suggest that the main effective substance of SPL for suppressing blood glucose elevation is a kind of mucilage SDF.
The mechanism by which may be largely attributable to delayed transport from the stomach and inhibition of diffusion and absorption in the small intestine by viscous SDF.

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I would like to mention about the trial of food culture in Japanese school lunch focusing food environment and the dishes.
Splendid lunchrooms have been appeared in great numbers since 1975, and they amounted to 9339 schools, 28% of total schools that enforced school lunch, research of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2000.
I will introduce some unique schools of them. At Satosyonishi elementary school in Okayama Prefecture, there are stained glass, looks like a belt, on the center of the ceiling of the lunchroom, at Todoroku elementary school in Tochigi Prefecture, the lunchroom looks like a cottage that was made from logs of cedars, at Kiso elementary school in Nagano Prefecture, all of the interior of the lunchroom are made of Hinoki, Japanese cypress, and at Bisei elementary school in Okayama Prefecture has two lunchrooms, one is for the exclusive of the lower classes, the other is for the exclusive of the upper classes. The lunchroom of lower classes is European style has a star that is symbol of town chandelier. The lunchroom of upper classes is a Japanese-style room with Tatami and so on.Such are too numerous to mention. It is said that children shout for joy at new lunchrooms, and after taht they, as a rule, have better matters. It is said that good environment makes a good man, so that the food environment occupies important position in food culture beyond measure.
And about the dishes for school lunch had begun to be developed in the place of production of timber or chinaware since about 1975. About the chinaware, Aritayaki (a kind of pottery) from Arita Town, Minoyaki from Toki City or Tajimi Town and Hasamiyaki from Hasami Town. The place of wood-working are Ohno Villege (where everyone is a master of an art, and is famous for Ohno Craft) in Iwate Prefecture, Oketo Town, in Hokkaido, Shogawa Town in Toyama Prefecture, Kawakami Villege (Masanami dishes which is made from Japanese cedar) and so on. Manufacturer of chinaware which was big corporation developed dishes for school lunch. So chinaware dishes had come into wide use that was the third rank of the most used dishes, next to plastic dishes and outstripped aluminous dishes, and they had come into use 6876 schools in Japan, according to the research of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2000.
Recently schools have increased in which they use lacquered, called Shikki, for bowl of soup. For example Wajimanuri of Ishikawa Prefecture, Aizukitakatanuri of Fukushima Prefecture and so on.
In traditional Japanese food life, we have used soup bowl what we call Shiruwan formiso soup or osuimono (Japanese soup) for long time. And it has still been handed down by tradition. It is important to use Shiruwan for school lunch also in order to hand down Japanese food culture to children.
We'd like to expect that such a trial of food culture will come into wide by school lunch.

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This study examined the contents of a diary written by Souin Suzuki, a wealthy farmer who lived in the late 19th century in Obanazawa village (now Obanazawa city), situated next to one of the main traveling roads of North Eastern Japan, and close to an important river in Yamagata prefecture.
This diary covers a 35 year span from the end of the Kouka Period to the late beginning of the Meiji period (1846-1882). It relates the personal family history, the main occurrences of the village and its surroundings, as well as a record of public events, such as festivals, weddings, funerals, etc. A detailed account of the food served for these occasions was carefully recorded. By analyzing the contents of the meals, an insight into the eating habits of these people was possible. Every course meal and amount of alcohol served over each year was counted and summed up. It was concluded that the meals were not only composed of local products, but also of rare delicacies and perishables brought mainly by boat from all over Japan.

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The use of mineral water at home began to increase since the mid 1980s. Since good drinking water is free from the tap in Japan, we doubted if this tendency to buy mineral water would continue to increase and become popular in Japan.
In order to verify this, we conducted a survey in 1988, in 1998 and additionally in 2002 among women's junior college students who live in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Based on the 1988 survey, there was still a slight hesitation to buy water, and mineral water seemed to be for emergency use only, while the use of a water purifier seemed more promising for those who have complaints about the quality of tap water. From the 1998 survey, ten years later, the use of a water purifier had definitely increased, but the use of mineral water had increased more. The reason for this was considered to be the increase in people's interest in good healthy drinking water.However, in the follow-up survey in 2002, some reluctance to buy mineral water was observed due to the change in surroundings and the effect of a long recession.
We feel that addition research on the use of mineral water is necessary in order to verify our doubt.

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