ABSTRACT

Adequate nutrition in students is a vital key to overall performance in school as it affects their learning capacity and cognitive development. This study examines the food habit, nutritional knowledge and anthropometric status of students in Obowo Local Government Area, Imo State. The study was a cross-sectional study. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select a total of 414 respondents. Data on socio-demographic/economic characteristics, feeding habits, nutritional knowledge and anthropometric status of the respondents were collected using structured and validated questionnaire. The IBM SPSS version 23.0 computer programme was used to analyze the data. Significant relationship was judged at p ≤ 0.05. Data obtained were presented using frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Pearson correlation was used to analyze the relationship between food habits, anthropometric status and nutritional knowledge of the respondents. Result from the study showed that 42% of the respondents were still in secondary and are between the age of 17 years and 19 years (41.8%). More than half (56.3%) of their fathers have attended their tertiary education, majority (68.8%) are civil servants while most (87.9%) of them above N 38,000 in a month. However, majority (63.5%) of the respondents fed more than 3 times in a day and most (69.8%) of them skip their meals. Most of them eat fruits (66.2%) and vegetables (66.1%) at least 3 times in a week. Meanwhile, more than half (56.5%) of the respondents had poor nutrition knowledge while few (10.6%) had a good nutrition knowledge. More than half (56%) of the respondents had normal height- for- age, 44.9% of them are wasted while 57.2% were overweight. There was a significant relationship between respondents nutritional knowledge and their meal skipping habit (p=0.05), snacking habit (p=-0.046) and their vegetable consumption (p=-0.023). There was also a significant relationship between respondent’s height for-age and their meal skipping habit. There was also a significant relationship between respondent’s weight- for-age and their snacking habit (p=-0.01) and vegetable consumption (0.013). A significant relationship was also found between their BMI for age and their meal skipping habit (p=-0.034) and fruit consumption (0.041). The results revealed that the students were deficient in knowledge and understanding of the facts about energy and nutritive values of foods. Therefore, adequate nutrition education is needed at both primary and secondary level; this will enable the students to make good food choices and positively influence their eating habits thereby ensuring better nutritional status.