The integration of school nutrition program into health promotion and prevention of lifestyle-related diseases in Japan.

After World War II, Japan has imported food from other countries to solve malnutrition, and then dietitians provided nutrition education to people for effective food utilization. Flour and skimmed milk imported from the United State were distributed to the school lunch program. Dietitians were trained to encourage the people to adapt western style dietary habits. The western style dietary habit issues have been brought since in 1980's as overeating and obesity have been considered as nation's health problems. In the 1990's, the prevention and treatment of lifestyle-related diseases became key objects for the nation. Government settled on "Healthy Japan 21" as a preventive policy of the lifestyle-related disease in 2000. In 2006, the middle survey for the effectiveness of the campaign was conducted, but it did not bring a good result as expected. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare made the "Japanese Food Guide Spinning Top" for practical and easy mean to improve eating habits. Dietitians are in the process of developing new nutrition education using this tool. In 2005, the nine specific targets' Basic Law on Dietary Education "Shoku-Iku" was enacted to promote childhood dietary education. The Ministry of Education and Science started the new education to become a teacher called "diet and nutrition teacher" on the professional education programs of registered dietitian in university. "Diet and nutrition teachers" have already started teaching in some schools. From now, the roles of dietitians are not only supervising food preparation and planning meals but also nutrition education as teachers.