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Lee, Feng, and Lee: The Relationship between Stress, Social Support and Healthy Diet Score among Chinese University Students in Korea
Research Article

Korean Journal of Community Nutrition 2015; 20(4): 273-280.

Published online: 30 August 2015

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5720/kjcn.2015.20.4.273

The Relationship between Stress, Social Support and Healthy Diet Score among Chinese University Students in Korea

Sunghee Lee1, Zhen Feng2, Youngmee Lee2

1Institute of Human Genomic Study, Korea University Ansan Hospital, Ansan, Korea.

2Department of Food & Nutrition, Graduate School of Gachon University, Seongnam, Korea.

Corresponding author: Youngmee Lee. Food and Nutrition, Gachon University, 342 SeongsamDaero, Sujeong-Gu, Seongnam, Gyonggi 13120, Korea. Tel: (031)750-5971, Fax: (031)750-5971, leeym@gachon.ac.kr

Received 29 June 2015       Revised 7 August 2015       Accepted 18 August 2015

Copyright © 2015 The Korean Society of Community Nutrition

(open-access):

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Objectives

The study aimed to examine whether healthy diet score was associated with stress and social support among 472 Chinese college students in Korea.

Methods

The study participants were 472 (187 male, 285 female) Chinese college students in Gyeong-gi area. From April 2013 to Oct 2013, participants were asked to fill out questionnaires on healthy diet score (20 questions), stress (20 questions), and social support (20 questions). Each question was scored by a 5-point Likert scale (total scores of each questionnaire were ranged from 20 to 100). Questions on healthy diet were sub-categorized as 'Healthy food eating (HFE)', 'Healthy eating habits (HEH)', and 'Avoidance of unhealthy food (AUF)'. Reliability test was conducted with Cronbach's αlpha (α=0.79).

Results

Healthy diet score was higher in participants who stayed longer in Korea, who spoke Korean language fluently, and who assessed his or her own health status as very good. Adjusted means of healthy diet scores were estimated after adjusting for age, gender, body mass index, duration of staying, and Korean language fluency. According to tertile categories, participants with low tertile stress but high tertile social support showed the highest score of healthy diet (72.59±1.45), whereas participants with high tertile of stress but low tertile of social support had the lowest score of healthy diet (59.22±1.54). As for the three sub-categories of healthy diet score, the score of HFE increased as the score of social support increased.

Conclusions

Our findings suggested that social support system is beneficial to alleviate stress and to improve healthy diet score.

Keywords: stress, healthy diet, social support

Figures and Tables

Table 1

General Characteristics of the study participants (n=472)

kjcn-20-273-i001

1) Mean±SD 2) Korean language level was based on a Test of Proficiency in Korea (TOPIK); The full scores in 'Healthy diet score', 'Stress score', 'Social support score' were 100, 100, and 100 respectively.

ab: Different letters present statistical difference from Tukey-Kramer adjustment.

Table 2

Healthy diet scores of 20 questions according to three sub-categories (HFE, HEH, AUF) (n=472)

kjcn-20-273-i002

Each question (min 1, max 5)

Table 3

Correlation analysis (n=472)

kjcn-20-273-i003

1) Healthy Food Eating

2) Healthy Eating Habits

3) Avoidance of Unhealthy Food

***: p < 0.001

Table 4

Association between healthy practice in diet and stress according to social support (n= 472)

kjcn-20-273-i004

1) Ptrend indicated a significant trend on healthy diet score as the tertile range of social support according to stress score

2) Total, the sum of HFE, HEH, and AUF (min 20, max 100)

3) Lsmeans±standard error: adjusted for age, gender, body mass index, years of stay, and Korean language fluency

4) HFE, Healthy Food Eating (min 5, max 25)

5) HEH, Healthy Eating Habits (min 9, max 45)

6) AUF, Avoidance of Unhealthy Food (min 6, max 30)

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