According to the development of industry and the growth of economy, nowadays our diet has been changing to a meat-based western style and accordingly, the ingestion amounts of vegetables and dietary fibers have been relatively reduced. Due to the collapse of such traditional diet, the ingestion of proteins, fats and calories has been increased and thus the physical standard of nation was improved. However, due to the over-ingestion of foods, the lack of physical exercise, stress, etc., physical strength was rather decreased and the amount of energy accumulated in body was increased, and thus obese patients show a tendency to rapidly increase. In fact, Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in Korea in 1992 showed that 19.4% of Korean males and 19.9% of Korean females were obese (Criteria: BMI 25) and especially, concerning the Korean housewives, the rate of obesity including over-weight was 24-36%.
Obesity refers to a condition where lots of fats are amassed in hypodermis in the body, and in general, it means a phenomenon where the remaining calories are excessively accumulated in the form of fat because the intake of energy exceeds its consumption amount. Obesity may become sufficiently problematic by itself and further, it may be a cause of adult diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, stroke, angina pectoris and hyperlipidemia. That is, the obesity has become not only apparent problems but also major causes of giving rise to a big change in causes of human death and aspects of disease structure.
As the obesity becomes a current issue, lots of people have been greatly interested in diet methods to prevent and treat obesity. The purpose of diet to prevent or treat obesity should be the prevention or treatment of the complication of obesity as well as weight loss. In addition, the body weight cannot be re-gained after the treatment of obesity, thereby maintaining the optimum body weight that has been reduced. Recent studies recommend that obese persons reduce their weight by 5-10% of their initial weight rather than excessive weight loss to attain their standard weight, because even this can improve blood pressure, serum lipid, blood sugar, and insulin resistance, etc.
As the diet methods that have been hitherto known to prevent or treat the obesity, there are diet therapy, kinesiology, behavior modification therapy, etc., and in particular, the diet therapy can be the most fundamental and essential method for obese treatment. A desirable diet therapy should degrade the fats accumulated in body by reducing the calorie intake and increasing their consumption. As methods for restricting the calories, there are several methods according to their degree, but in general, a nutritionally-balanced ‘low calorie diet (LCD)’ is mostly utilized and operated principally through recipe using food exchange groups. However, in actually, one's dining behavior is very difficult to be modified and it is also extremely difficult for modern people to take a meal while considering food exchange groups.
Therefore, there is a need to develop foods capable of assisting obese people to operate nutritionally-balanced diet and at the same time, efficiently reducing their body fat. These days, a number of diet products have been on the market, but they have a difficulty of not being able to substitute meal. In addition, even in the case of substitute foods, there are lots of products having problems in nutrition balance. Moreover, in case of using diet supplements only, obese people may often neglect their meal management that should be improved fundamentally, and consequently they experience temporal diet success and repeated yo-yo phenomenon without doing right diet. That is, to improve people's health, it will be very important to develop substitute foods capable of supplying appropriate nutrition and calories, and of improving the meal habit of obese people and a health food effective in the reduction of body fat.