These days, modern people have become interested in food therapy due to health trends of pursuing their own physical and mental health. Food therapy is one of the alternative means of curing diseases that are difficult to heal completely with modern medicine. It helps supplement nutrients needed in the body with food, and, as the result of it, improve immunity to diseases. Also since it considers characteristics of the individual disposition as much as possible, correct and specific treatment is possible by it. One of the greatest features of food therapy is that it can provide people with psychological comfort as well as physical treatment. Because it has direct effects on human health, various media emphasize its value to the consumers so that they can utilize it in their daily life. Since it can also reduce the cost of disease prevention and treatment, it can affect the eating out activities of consumers pursing their own health.
While the interest and value of consumers on food therapy are getting higher, the topics of most food therapy studies deal with healing through food therapy. Studies on the menu selectivity of eating out to graft on the marketing of eating out companies are insufficient.
The purposes of this study were to know the following. One was to identify that when food therapy recognizers visited restaurants, their consideration of examining closely on the elements of food therapy was a kind of prerequisite. And the second was to know whether the effect on the menu selectivity of eating out of food therapy recognizers had relevant or not. For the second purpose, the elements of food therapy considered as important ones by the consumers were analyzed empirically.
To verify the hypotheses of the study, we distributed questionnaires of 300 copies to the consumers who have experience in eating out restaurants placed in Busan and Gyeongnam, South Korea, for 28 days from September 1 to September 28, 2019, with the concept of food therapy. Except 28 copies that contained unsatisfactory answers or did not answer to the many questions, 272 copies were used as valid samples. The statistical processing and analysis of the valid samples were done by using IBM SPSS 25.0 version that is one of the social science statistical programs, and the results of the analysis were the following.
First, it was analysed that the physical pursuit of food therapy recognizers had a significant effect on the trophism, functionality, yaksun and detoxication of the menu selectivity. In particular, yaksun had the hightest significant effect, and the next highest influential relationships were trophism, functionality and detoxication in order.
Second, it was analysed that the psychological pursuit of food therapy recognizers had a significant effect on the trophism, functionality, yaksun and detoxication of the menu selectivity. In particular, yaksun had the hightest significant effect, and the next highest influential relationships were detoxication, trophism and functionality in order.
By empirical analysis, it was showed that both the physical and psychological pursuits of food therapy recognizers had positive effects on the menu selectivity. Also it was identified that the most important element of the menu selectivity for food therapy recognizers was considered as yaksun food therapy one. Based on the these results, it was identified that eating out restaurant managers should consider firstly the yaksun functionality of food ingredients when they develop menus grafting on food therapy elements. And also it was recognized that food therapy provided the directions and implications for eating out industries in the future.