In 2005, the Diet enacted the basic law on education on eating habits (shokuiku) to promote healthful eating habits. This move came against the backdrop of a deterioration in the country's dietary culture, which traditionally has been considered well-balanced and healthy.
With the postwar economic boom came changes in people's lifestyles and eating habits, resulting in irregular meals, nutritional deficiencies, obesity, lifestyle-related illnesses such as diabetes, extreme dieting and large-scale food wastage.
The dietary law led to the adoption of a basic plan to strengthen education on eating habits from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2010. It has numerical targets, including a reduction in the percentage of elementary school students who skip breakfast from 4 percent in fiscal 2000 to zero percent in fiscal 2010, and of men in their 20s and 30s who skip breakfast from 30 percent and 23 percent, respectively, in fiscal 2003 to 15 percent or less in 2010.