The purpose of this study was to examine the support for children’s dietary needs in the “Children’s Lifestyle Support Project” and university students support necessary to enact sustainable volunteer activities by clarifying the offered foods, the children’s choice of food, and the satisfaction, burden, and learning associated with their activities. Regarding the number of food categories selected by the children, almost all of them selected foods that fell into four or more categories. However, only about 20% of the children chose milk, and some of them left the foods that they had chosen on their plates without eating them. In addition, a questionnaire survey of students suggested that these activities helped increase their enthusiasm to pursue a food-related profession and hone their practical skills for the future. However, it became clear that students found it difficult to communicate with the children. In the future, we will make the “Children’s Lifestyle Support Project” a place for children to receive food and nutrition education with the goal of helping them develop and maintain good dietary habits. In addition, we will provide support to help students enjoy volunteering with peace of mind and build a system for encouraging such activities.

This study examined the current frequency of teatime snack and beverage consumption and dietary behaviors among Malaysian university students to develop an effective method for delivering nutritional education workshops aimed at preventing non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Surveys on dietary habits and teatime snack and beverage consumption were administered to 208 students at the Universiti Tenaga Nasional.

The survey on dietary habits revealed that the subjects had a good understanding of the association between exercise and health as well as the importance of diet. However, they had a poor understanding of sugar intake, and reported that they thought it was not easy to select beverages that contain less sugar and to be careful of excessive sugar intake.

The survey on teatime snack and beverage consumption demonstrated a high frequency of water intake among the subjects. The frequency of the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) that contain sugar or condensed milk, such as tea (with condensed milk or sugar) and Milo, was also high. In contrast, the intake of unsweetened beverages such as tea (without sugar), coffee (without sugar), green tea (without sugar), and Chinese tea (without sugar) was less frequent. The findings suggest that to prevent NCDs, effective nutritional education workshops for Malaysian university students should focus on the basic knowledge of sugar and beverages, include visual aids and tasting activities that help understand level of sugar content and the amount of sugar contained in beverages, and include activities that enhance the “perceived behavioral control”. We aim to focus on resolving these challenges in future interventional nutrition education workshops targeting Malay university students.

Eating breakfast is very important for the health and development of children. However, few studies have explored the correlates of children’s academic performance. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the associations of breakfast and scholastic performance.

Six hundred fifty-five children, aged 8 to 12 years, were surveyed using original questionnaires. Breakfast skipping was defined as having missed any food between waking and the commencement of morning school classes at least 1 school day during the past week.

Eight percent of participants reported skipping breakfast at least once time per week. Children who ate breakfast everyday scored higher on Japanese language test than children who did not eat breakfast (71.6±18.9 vs 65.9±18.0, p<0.05). Furthermore, students who did not had breakfast had higher negative emotion than those who always ate breakfast.

Breakfast is not only promoted to improve health, but also to improve scholastic performance. We suggest further studies on the relationship between meal content, and scholastic performance.

To clarify placement of registered dieticians/nutritionists and current status of food education and emergency food stockpile among early childhood education and care (ECEC) facilities (certified nursery schools and centers for ECEC) in major cities, a questionnaire survey was conducted. The rates of implementing food-related approaches through collaboration and cooperation with parents and those concerned in the community were 62.5 and 31.2%, respectively. The rate of creating “food education plans”, covering meal provision, based on general plans was lower among ECEC facilities without the presence of registered dieticians/nutritionists. In addition, the rate of providing food education to local child-rearing families was lower among ECEC facilities without the presence of registered dieticians/nutritionists. Furthermore, the rate of storing emergency food was 85.6%, and 59.4% of these facilities stored a surplus of emergency food for all children belonging to the facility. On comparing ECEC facilities with and without full-time registered dieticians/nutritionists, the emergency food storage rate was higher in the former. The results indicate the necessity of full-time registered dieticians/nutritionists at ECEC facilities, and further promoting food education for children and parenting households in their communities.