We believe that experiencing the practice of serving traditional event foods from a young age is necessary for promoting the preservation of Japanese food culture. Thus, the present study examined the status of initiatives taken to inherit traditional event foods in nursery schools in Hyogo Prefecture, the relationship to whether registered dietitians or nutritionists were on staff, and the status of initiatives in the community.

  A large percentage of nurseries serve traditional event foods for the New Year's period, Setsubun, Momo No Sekku, Tanabata and Christmas. However, we found that the percentage of nurseries serving traditional event foods on Doyo No Ushi No Hi and on New Year's Eve was low. Furthermore, the percentage of nurseries serving traditional event foods in urban areas was low. In addition, nurseries with in-house registered dietitians or nutritionists were more actively engaged in serving traditional event foods. These findings revealed that initiatives to adopt traditional event foods at nursery schools can be actively encouraged by registered dietitians or nutritionists, and that it is possible to educate the next generation about traditional Japanese food culture.

  A method for directly determining protein adherence to fiber substrate was investigated using a BCA reaction. Water to moisten the fabric, protein (bovine serum albumin) solution, and BCA solution were added to a test fabric swatch, which was then sandwiched between two polyethylene sheets to prevent air contact. After a predetermined time, the surface reflectance of the test swatch was measured from above the sheet to determine the degree of purple coloring due to the BCA reaction. It was found that a sufficient BCA reaction on the cotton swatch (2.5 cm × 2.5 cm) occured under conditions of 25℃, 8.0 μL/cm² of water, 4.8 μL/cm² of protein solution, and 16 μL/cm² of BCA solution. Furthermore, the calibration curve between the protein concentration in the range of 0.96–14 μg/cm² and the K/S value calculated from surface reflectance had the correlation coefficient R2＝0.9974, showing good linearity. Unlike the conventional method, sensitivity determination is possible because of the large inclination of the calibration curve.

  Image analysis was applied to evaluate color feature parameters of monochromatic fabrics dyed with natural and synthetic dyes using CIEL^*a^*b^* uniform color space. Color measurements of these dyed fabrics were done with a commercially available color scanner. L^*, a^*, b^*, C^* and h of CIE color system were obtained for each pixel (i, j) in the image, respectively. Mean values for L^*, C^* and h of all pixels (AVE-L^*, AVE-C^* and AVE-h) and the standard deviation value of each color feature parameter were obtained. A high-performance neuron training algorithm using AI technology was introduced, and a forward-propagation neural network was applied for the purpose of adjusting the network in order to obtain the most accurate description of the evaluation system. Fabrics dyed with natural and synthetic dyes could be completely distinguished. Furthermore, the dyed fabrics were discriminated by a convolutional neural network based on image recognition. It was shown that the discrimination can be performed with extremely high accuracy.

  In this study, we tested the hypothesis that eating together has a stronger influence on food intake than having information on others' food intake. Sixteen women were allowed to eat as many snacks as they liked in four minutes under four conditions: (1) Eating alone while looking at information that others ate a lot; (2) Eating alone while looking at information that others ate a little; (3) Eating with others while looking at information that others ate a lot; and (4) Eating with other people while looking at information that others ate a little. The number of snacks eaten under each condition was calculated. Under conditions 2 and 4, 11.4 ± 7.8 and 11.9 ± 7.0 snacks were consumed, respectively. For conditions 1 and 3, 14.1 ± 6.6 and 10.0 ± 4.6 snacks were eaten, respectively. Compared to when eating alone, subjects ate fewer snacks when they ate with other people. Therefore, it may be deduced that this study supports the hypothesis that social norms influence individual behavior.