The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of dietary education using the “Japanese Food Guide Spinning Top” (J-FGST) on high school students.
The students in the study numbered 155 (4 classes) of the first-year students of public high school in Fukuoka. They were divided into 2 groups : an “education group” and a “control group”. Before the dietary education took place, two questionnaires were administered to all students in October 2009, which considered dietary habits (100-point scale) and awareness of dietary matters and health.
Subsequently, 76 students attended a lesson utilizing J-FGST for 50 minutes, and then answered questionnaire surveys to determine their understanding at the end of the lesson. Six months later all subjects were given the same surveys and the changes in their dietary knowledge and attitudes were compared.
As for the results, the education group showed greater knowledge and improvement in dietary behavior than did the control group. The group scoring less than 70 points on the previous survey concerning simple dietary matters had significantly higher scores（13.3 points）six months later.
It can be suggested that dietary education utilizing J-FGST led to an improvement in awareness and attitudes concerning healthy dietary habits among high school students. The education was particularly effective for the students who had poor dietary awareness.

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A questionnaire survey was conducted among all parents/guardians at four elementary schools in Osaka City with the aim of proposing various bean menus and creating opportunities to cook beans in the home. For the 422 respondents who were suitable for analysis, we examined the preferences and cooking motivations for six kinds of bean dishes made using dried or precooked beans and their relation to bean intake background factors. In the three kinds of Japanese-style bean menus made using dried beans, significant differences were shown between preferences and cooking motivations. Both the highest preference and cooking motivation were for minestrone made using precooked beans. On the other hand, regarding bean and vegetable salad, the preference and cooking motivation were quite low and significantly related to many bean intake background factors. The number of menus selected as bean dishes to cook was affected by the number of menus selected as beans dishes to eat, nutritional awareness concerning beans, and the frequency of eating beans. This result suggests that proposal of easy-to-cook and attractive bean dishes and education concerning the nutritional value of beans are effective means of encouraging cooking of beans in the home. The cooking motivation for bean dishes made using precooked beans was significantly higher than that for bean dishes made using dried beans in the group who had a lower intake frequency or did not like beans. Therefore, it is possible that bean dishes made using precooked beans might encourage home cooking in the group who rarely eat beans.

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