ABSTRACT

 The study was designed to investigate food preferences, nutrition knowledge and anthropometric status of students in selected public and private schools in Owerri North Local Government Area. A total of 264 respondents were selected using simple random sampling. Information on their socio-economic characteristics, nutrition knowledge, food preferences and dietary habits were obtained by means of structured questionnaire. Anthropometrics characteristics of the students were assessed and compared with World Health Organization (WHO) child growth standard charts. More data was analyzed using SPSS version 21. Many (65.9%) of the study participants were of public schools while the rest (34.1%) attended private schools. There were more females (54.9%) than male respondents (45.1%). Most of the respondents were between 10-13 (31.1%) and 14-17 (41.3%) years. Majority (81.8%) of the students were Christians. The main family size (47.7%) was 4-6 persons. Many (42%) received allowance of N2,000- N4,000 monthly, while (27.3%) of them received below 1,000 per month. The respondent’s fathers were mostly civil servants (42.4%) and traders (28.8%) and while their mother’s occupation were mainly traders (30.7%), farmers (31.8%), self-employed (22.0%) and civil servants (14.8%). Some (39%) of the respondent ate 2 times in a day, while 11.7% ate once a day. Many (68.2%) of the respondent did not skip meal whereas 30.7% of the respondent skipped lunch (15.2%), breakfast (6.8%) and dinner (9.1%). More than half (51.5%) of the respondents ate between meals sometimes while 18.9% never took in between meals. Some (32.2%) ate fruits 2-3 times in a week, their favorite fruit is orange (37.9%), mango (21.6%), watermelon (20.5%), apple (12.5%). Many (39.8%) drank milk daily, while (15.2%) never drank milk. The respondents strongly preferred local staples like plantain (36.6%), beans and rice (17.0%), stewed rice (18.9%), fried rice (17.9%) and garri and soup (18.9%) as well as pastries like cakes (15.2%), biscuits (14.4%), sweet (14.8%). About half (50.4%) had average nutrition knowledge. (33.7%) had poor knowledge of nutrition while only 12.1% had good nutrition knowledge. Majority (79.6%) of the respondents had normal height for age while few were either stunted (17.4%) or severely stunted (3.0%). The prevalence of stunting was higher in girls (21.4) than the boys (19.3%).  BMI for age status revealed that many (67.4%) were normal, also there were overweight (14.0%) or obese (4.1%) than thin (6.4%) or severely thin (1.1%) respondents. Poor nutrition knowledge of respondents may have contributed to the poor dietary practices of the respondents.