Adolescents need a balanced nutrition intake because their physical development and activity are dramatically increasing (Kim, 2002). They prefer more tasty and trendy food, so they eat a lot of fast food and instant snacks, which is affected by food commercials and convenience (The Food and Drug Association, 2007). As a result of that, there are a lot of health problems caused from much intake of sugar, salt, fat, etc (Chung & Han, 2000). Therefore, in early 1997, the school meal program started to operate in all the primary schools, and expanded to high schools in 1999 and middle schools in 2002 (The Ministry of Education, 1999) to improve their body strength and dietary life by providing a healthy well-balanced lunch (Lee, 2003). Thanks to the school meal policy, the school meal service increased nationwide but there are many problems related to facility costs, securing financial resources and utilizing human resources in middle and high schools rather than in primary schools because of insufficient financial support (Kim & Lee, 2003; Lee et al., 2002).

The Ministry of Education and Human Resources Department comes up with "comprehensive school meal improvement measures (2007~2011)" as a means of substantiating the school meal operation and making school meal facilities better. It is aimed at modernizing the school meal facilities, increasing the rate of installing air cooling system and reducing the number of schools which don't have their own cafeterias. Particularly, it plans to reduce the rate of schools without their own cafeterias from 23.7% in 2006 to 20% in 2011. The rate of providing school meal service in urban areas is lower than rural area with only 51.5% (The Ministry of Education, 2007). Currently, schools without their own cafeterias are providing school meals in the classrooms, which have problems with a high risk of safety accidents in the process of moving the meals, improper meal temperature, unclean status of meal provision and providing uneven meal quantity to students (Kim & Lee, 2004). However, even if there is a cafeteria in a school, the space is small, waiting time for meals is prolonged making students unsatisfied (Lee, 2005). There are single-sex schools in Korea, and boys and girls might have different needs and satisfaction for the school meals. The satisfaction of school meals is related to improving the effects of school meals (Kim & Lee, 2003), so we need to improve the school meal services to enhance the students' nutrition status and health (Kim, 2005).

Satisfaction of school meals varies depending on the quality of meals, diversity of food, food hygiene and environment (Kim et al., 2003), but the eating place of school meals is different from cafeterias to classrooms and gender of meal eater is different. Service is the most important factor to improve the satisfaction on school meals. We need to examine the satisfaction on school meals by eating place and gender to improve the satisfaction of school meal. However, there was little research done on the comparison of satisfaction between eating places (cafeterias and classrooms) and gender (boy and girl) in school meals. We surveyed the satisfaction on school meals among middle school students in different eating places and gender; therefore, this study can provide basic data to improve the quality of school food service.

This study was carried out to improve students' satisfaction for school meal service. We surveyed the satisfaction on school meals among middle school students in different eating places and gender. To eat meals in classrooms, it needs to be conducted by transferring meals in large distribution server with student meal servers by dumbwaiter to the classroom. Then, students in charge or helpers distribute the meals to each student (Chyun et al., 1999). On the other hand, eating school meals in the cafeteria, students take food as they want and meal helpers distribute food in the designated area, which makes the school food distributed with warmth and cleaniness, managed with hygiene. Also, students can have their meals in a pleasant and hygienic place. However, school cafeterias take a lot of space, and small space provokes dissatisfaction on prolonged distribution time (Lee, 2005). Since there are benefits and defects in both distribution methods, we need to examine student's preference in eating place and satisfaction of school meal service, so we can improve meal distribution methods and efficiency depending on the characteristics of each school.

A comparison of satisfaction on school meal environment presented those students who eat school meals in their classroom showed more satisfaction on meal distribution time, eating place, eating atmosphere (P < 0.001). As for satisfaction on food of school meals, classroom group showed higher satisfaction than cafeteria group (in quantity, diversity of types of soup, the cost of school meal, dessert). As for hygiene, cafeteria group has higher satisfaction than that of classroom, but waiting time for meal distribution, classroom group has higher satisfaction than that of classroom because students prefer to have meals at their seats due to convenience (An, 2008), and eating meal in classroom has faster service than cafeteria distribution (Lee & Lyu, 2005). In this study, the reason that cafeteria group showed more dissatisfaction on meal plate arrangement and disruption to studying after having meal than class room distribution group (P < 0.05) is considered that cafeteria distribution takes more meal distribution time than that of classroom and requires plate management without help. In case of hygiene, the cafeteria group showed higher satisfaction than the classroom distribution group because kitchen employees distribute meals in the cafeteria, so the management of school meals is convenient and hygienic. The classroom group showed significantly greater satisfaction than cafeteria group (P < 0.05) because meal distribution in the cafeteria is usually self-controlled by students. Particularly, in the research about the students' preferred eating place (Lee & Jang, 2005), students preferred to eat meals in cafeteria due to inconvenience of transferring meal plates and unsanitary environment of classroom, but at the same time they preferred classroom distribution due to the long waiting time for meal distribution and inconvenience of going to the cafeteria. Therefore, it needs to try various methods to reduce waiting time such as differentiating meal time in each grade and installing many distributing counters.

Comparison over school meal satisfaction between gender showed that boys were satisfied with overall food of school meal, but they thought the meal time was not proper (P < 0.001) and the school meal disrupted the 5^th period class study after lunch (P < 0.05). On the other hand, girls were dissatisfied over meal temperature (P < 0.001) and hygiene (P < 0.05). Therefore, the differentiating school meal service depending on gender is recommended. In boy's school, it should be considered to reduce waiting time such as installing many distributing counters. In girl's school, it should be considered to manage hygienic factors and maintain warmth or coolness of food such as equipping with containers for maintaining temperature of food and reducing interval time between cooking and distribution. Though conversion of eating place from classroom to cafeteria is very much in need, there is some difficulty toward it. Therefore, schools that do not have a cafeteria for eating meals should secure safe distributing cart to maintain proper food temperature, and conduct student education for proper self-distribution.

As the results of this research, there were differences of satisfaction on school meal service by eating places and gender. The satisfaction on school meals is related to improving the effects of school meal (Kim & Lee, 2003), so we should serve the school meal in different methods by different in eating place and single sex-schools. To get more information about meal satisfaction in school service, a further research need for the preference menu by eating place and gender.