Evaluation of Diet Quality according to Nutrient Intake between Highly Educated, Married, Unemployed and Employed Women

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to provide foundation data for making health care policy for married women by assessing the dietary intake between highly educated married, employed and unemployed women. It is a direct interview, cross-sectional study with 24-hour recall method for one day. In selecting the subjects for this study, married, unemployed women were selected from a certain area (Daedeok Science Town) in Daejeon where there are high rates of highly educated women, and the married, employed women were selected from the teaching profession in order to avoid confounding due to including a variety of jobs. According to the Korean Standard Classification of Occupations, teaching is the representational occupation of highly educated, married women. Then, to prevent confounding due to age, we selected the subjects out of each age group at the same rate through random sampling. Women who had not graduated college, worked only part-time, or had no current spouse were excluded. As a result, 486 highly-educated, married, unemployed (250) and employed (236) women were used for analyzing data. The unemployed women consumed a higher amount of fat, cholesterol, sodium, vitamin C and folic acid while the employed women consumed a higher amount of iron, vitamin B1 and vitamin B2. P/M/S ratio being 1/1.18/1.05 and 1/1.05/0.87, for the unemployed women and the employed women, respectively, unemployed respondents had a higher saturated fat intake than those of employed. It is in excess of the standard ratio (1/1/1) of the Korean RDA. At the same time, in unemployed respondents the percent of energy intake from fat (24.8%, 23.2%) and animal fat (12.4%, 11.4%) were higher than those of employed respondents. The mean daily nutrient intake of calcium, zinc, and iron for both groups of respondents were lower than the Korean RDA. Both groups had phosphorus as the highest nutrient and calcium as the lowest nutrient of INQ (Index of Nutritional Quality) while nutrients with the INQ being less than 1 were calcium and iron. To sum up, the following conclusions can be made Nutrition education and guidance for reduction of the intake of fat, especially animal fat, are necessary for unemployed women. In addition, highly educated, married, unemployed and employed women should increase the consumption of foods rich in iron and calcium to prevent anemia and osteoporosis, while decreasing the intake of phosphorus to balance proportions of calcium and phosphorus.