Educating restaurant owners and cooks to lower their own sodium intake is a potential strategy for reducing the sodium contents of restaurant foods: a small-scale pilot study in South Korea

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: This study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of a sodium reduction program at local restaurants through nutrition education and examination of the health of restaurant owners and cooks. SUBJECTS/METHODS: The study was a single-arm pilot intervention using a pre-post design in one business district with densely populated restaurants in Seoul, South Korea. The intervention focused on improving nutrition behaviors and psychosocial factors through education, health examination, and counseling of restaurant personnel. Forty-eight restaurant owners and cooks completed the baseline survey and participated in the intervention. Forty participants completed the post-intervention survey. RESULTS: The overweight and obesity prevalences were 25.6% and 39.5%, respectively, and 74.4% of participants had elevated blood pressure. After health examination, counseling, and nutrition education, several nutrition behaviors related to sodium intake showed improvement. In addition, those who consumed less salt in their baseline diet (measured with urine dipsticks) were more likely to agree that providing healthy foods to their customers is necessary. This study demonstrated the potential to reduce the sodium contents of restaurant foods by improving restaurant owners' and cooks' psychological factors and their own health behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: This small pilot study demonstrated that working with restaurant owners and cooks to improve their own health and sodium intake may have an effect on participation in restaurant-based sodium reduction initiatives. Future intervention studies with a larger sample size and comparison group can focus on improving the health and perceptions of restaurant personnel in order to increase the feasibility and efficacy of restaurant-based sodium reduction programs and policies.

Lifestyle factors and obesity among Korean adults

The purpose of this study was to examine whether lifestyle-related factors, such as frequency of drink-ing and smoking, mental stress, sleep duration, economic status, and education level, are associated with obesity [as defined given by the WHO report on Asia] in a selected sample of Korean adults. The subjects were 1,566 adults [505 men, 1,061 women] aged over 20 years who visited a public health center for medical checkups in Seoul, Korea, between November 1, 2010, and October 30, 2011. The association between lifestyle-related factors and obesity was assessed by using multivariate logistic regression analysis after adjusting for gender, age, frequency of drinking and smoking, mental stress, sleep duration, economic status, and education level. Only economic status and education level significantly predicted obesity; very rich people and people who completed high school, college, or higher were less likely to be obese. Therefore, frequency of smoking and drinking, sleep duration, and level of stress were not associated with obesity but economic status and educational level significantly predicted obesity