ABSTRACT

This work examined the milk and milk products consumption behaviour, anthropometric and calcium status of adults (18 and above) in selected rural areas of Ikwuano Local Government Area. Milk and milk products offer nutritional quality to human being which has significant impact on the health status of an adult. Intake of milk and milk products provides essential nutrients such as protein, calcium and many others. Low dietary calcium intake has been proposed as being the primary cause of some nutritional deficiency in adults such as; hypocalcaemia, osteoporosis which occur when calcium level in blood is low thereby causing the bones to become brittle and fragile. A cross sectional survey was used to carry out this research. A total of four hundred (400) respondents were pooled and a self-administered questionnaire was provided. The questionnaire was divided into 5 sections. Section A captured demographic characteristics, Section B captured multiple questions about  consumption behaviour of consumers of milk and milk product,  Section C dealt with 24-hours recall of milk and milk products intake, Section D contained the question about the respondents attitude towards milk and milk products and Section E captured the anthropometric measurement of the respondents, Section F Captures the urine calcium measurement of the adults using calcium urinalysis (EDTA-Ethylene diamine tetra acetate method). Data obtained were described using frequency and percentage. Result for socio-demographic characteristics showed that 51.2% of the population are male while 48.8% are female mostly within the age of 18-35years with exact mean age of 31.60±8.99 years. Majority of the respondents had tertiary education (56.8%) and some secondary school (33.8%). It was observed that most of the respondents were low income earners, Igbo and are majorly Christians. Result of milk consumption behavior showed that 94.8% of the population consumes milk mostly filled cream powdered milk, about 21% that does not consume milk indicated that it was because milk and milk products are either expensive, not available or it discomforts them, and majority (39.2%) takes milk during breakfast. Furthermore, in the 24 hours recall of milk products consumption, most of the respondent consumed peak filled instant milk powder accounting to 26.6% of the population. Collected results shows a need to provide an adequate supply of calcium in a balanced daily diet of adults and also the need to create awareness of the role calcium plays in bone development through consumption of milk and milk products in Ikwuano LGA as their urine calcium are mostly as below RDA for even adults on calcium-free diet.