Changes in Diet

Recently, there was the article about “Rice bowls getting smaller” in Korea. As the picture below shows, people in Korea have used smaller and smaller rice bowls. According to National Statistics Office of Korea, the per capita consumption of rice of last year was just 69.8kg, which is the 2% less than in 2011. The fact that the consumption of rice in South Korea has been decreasing for 33 years in a row reflects the diet of Koreans has been changing. This could be considered as a result of changes in diet for contemporary people.

One of the most important change is that people in these days lives very busy lives. They have lots of schedules every single minute so that they can manage their works and tasks. They don’t have enough time to prepare the cook by themselves. For this reason, A research said that one third of Koreans eats out everyday. It indicates the using of alternative foods such as pre-cooked food are increasing.

As the globalization has spread out, people have many options to choose what to eat.  The culture of eating appetizer and desert which came from western eating style has became very popular in Asia as well, they don’t need to take same amounts of carbonhydrate compared to in the past. They prefer to enjoy the simple desert time with their friends instead of preparing the complicated process to cook.

Moreover, the knowledge of health caused that people reduced their own diet. The idea that eating little is helpful to keep their body healthy is very popular in these days. In addition, as all foods have to give some information about their nutritions, people can distinct what they need to take or not. People tends to eat vegetables or fruits rather than grains or skip their meals in order to be healthy and keep their bodyshape.


For these reasons, the diet is still changing now. These changes influence for people's lifestyle in positive ways or negative ways. The most certain thing is that lifestyle and diets are interactive.