Changes of Korean's Diet

How many times do you have a meal in your house? When was the last time you have dinner with your family? According to statistics, the rice consumption of Korean has dropped annually. The consumption was 120kg in 1990 but now 2012, Korean consume just 70kg. Why does this happen and what result was caused of this phenomenon?

On this story, most of all we can’t omit the McDonaldization. McDonaldization means the food culture of a country is becoming governed by global fast food restaurant. Only in 25 years, the food culture of Korea totally has changed by many kinds of fast food restaurant like McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut etc. It has been encroaching not only the young but also the old. If you get out of your house, you can meet various fast food restaurants every block. Now, we have a lot of things to choose. In this situation, Korean doesn’t need to obsess about rice.

The change of lifestyle is also a crucial factor to decreasing rice consumption. The introduction of 5 days work a week has changed Korean’s lifestyle. People who have time than ever often travel on weekend. And people who enjoy camping increase rapidly in these days. As they enjoy their leisure, they need something to eat easily. Since they don’t have much time to cook and prepare nice dishes for their travel, they buy food which can be eaten outside. That is, instant and frozen food like noodles, pizza and salad, become the most popular food for traveler.

As a result, Korean consumes rice the lowest in history. As society modernizes, it is natural that if they can, people find something simple and easy to get. Of course, there are a lot of benefits of modern dietary habit. We can save our time in preparing for a meal and we can enjoy the food on moving. We also can adjust nutrients what we need easily by buying cooked nutritious food.   On the other hand, we have to pull through lots of things related to our dietary habit. First, as most of us may know, the rate of obesity is increasing rapidly. Furthermore, not only the rate of obesity is increasing, but also because of high fat dietary, the change of hormones affects our body in bad ways. Korean suffering from atopic dermatitis and precocious puberty is increasing. And the economic difficulties of rice farm also have been on the rise.

Nowadays, everybody knows that we cannot live anymore only with a traditional meal what we ate in the past. The fast food is essential of our life and we can’t avoid the flow. However, the one thing we can handle is what food we are going to eat. What are you going to eat? Junk food? or modernized nutritious food? It’s on your choice.