Women’s Dietary Problems Over The Life Course

Abstract

This paper examines the dietary problems of Korean women and suggests policy actions for women's healthy diets. Dietary intake during the entire life, including nutritional status before birth, affects a woman's health. Thus dietary management is necessary for optimal nutrient intake throughout the life course. Inadequate nutrient intake is more prevalent in Korean women than in men. Korean women's dietary problems are: nutritional imbalance due to body image perception and consumption of convenience foods among female adolescents, difficulties in managing the diet of young women, nutritional imbalance in adult women, and poor dietary quality in elderly women. In order to improve the nutritional status of women, it is suggested to consider women’s life-course nutritional problems as a policy target.