Seung Guk Park1, Hyeon Ju Kim2, Young-Min Kwon3, Mi Hee Kong2

1Department of Family Medicine, Haeundae Paik Hospital, Inje University College of Medicine, Busan, 2Department of Family Medicine, Jeju National University Hospital, Jeju National University College of Medicine, Jeju, 3Department of Family Medicine, SamYook Seoul Medical Center, Seoul, Korea


Background: Nutrition label reading is helpful in attaining a healthy diet. Nutrition label use and its related factors have been studied in many Korean articles, but their research samples were the general population and not chronic disease patients. This study aimed to explore the use of nutrition labels and its relation to dietary intake among chronic disease patients in Korea.
Methods: A total of 3160 respondents aged≥20 years from the 2008-2009 Fourth Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES-IV) participated in the study. Their chronic medical conditions included hypertension, hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease, diabetes and/or stroke and they were interviewed regarding their use of nutrition labels. Nutrition intake was also estimated by 24-hour dietary recalls.
Results: Overall, 10.4% of the chronic disease patients reported to using nutrition labels. The nutrients they looked at first were total calories, fat and cholesterol. Factors related to reading nutrition labels were relatively higher education, high body mass index and lower frequency of alcohol intake in males and relatively younger age and higher education in females. Nutrition label users consumed lower total calories, protein and fat in the male CAD group, lower total calories and carbohydrate in both diabetes and total groups and lower total calories and fiber in the female stroke group.
Conclusions: Our study found that, in Korea, a significantly lower rate of patients with chronic disease read nutrition labels. Strategies need to be developed to improve clinical application of nutrition labels in this population.
Korean J Health Promot 2014;14(4):131-140

Keywords: Nutrition labeling, Chronic disease, Utilization