A Study on the Perception about Emergency Meal as School Meal Services among Nutrition Teachers in the COVID-19 Situation

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to evaluate the perception of nutrition teachers about emergency meals in all schools affiliated with the Seoul Office of Education. The purpose of this study was to suggest the need for emergency meals and provide directions for future development, thereby assisting meal service sites. An online survey was conducted from May 26 to 31, 2021, analyzing 130 collected samples. The summary of the results is as follows First, the nutrition teachers recognized the need for school meal services for the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases and considered the variance among school meal consumers. Also, they generally thought of emergency meals due to the need for social distancing and the decrease in the distribution of food. Secondly, in terms of the differences in the perception about emergency meals, nutrition teachers (45.4%) who have provided emergency meals (t=2.584, P＜0.05) were more aware of the need for emergency meals than nutrition teachers (54.6%) who had not provided emergency meals. Nutrition teachers conceived emergency meals to minimize the contact between people (45.6%) and to rectify the imbalance in nutrition (37.5). Next, emergency meal attributes were observed to be ranked in the order of convenience (3.49), safety (3.15), and satisfaction (2.88). Fourthly, although there were no meaningful differences in emergency meal attributes, there were statistically significant differences in the safety of the cooking process, menu familiarity, the low unit price compared to regular meals and the excellent satisfaction with nutrition provided (t=2.603, P＜0.05), (t=2.039, P＜0.05), (t=2.154, P＜0.05), (t=2.477, P＜0.05) respectively.