ABSTRACT

Adequate nutritional sta­tus is an integral part of adults’ wellbeing and results from the balance between food intake and organic nutrition needs at each stage of life. This study assessed the correlates between perceived and actual nutritional status of adults (35 to 60 years) in Umuahia North and Umuahia South areas of Abia State. A total of 381adults were selected using simple random sampling technique. A well-structured validated questionnaire was used to determine their socio-economic characteristics, Anthropometric and blood pressure levels were obtained using standard procedures. Data gathered were analyzed using IBM SPSS version 22. Results revealed that 57.0% are female while 43.0% are male. About 45.1% of the participants were aged between 35-44 years, 32.8% were between 45-54 years and 22.9% were between 55-60 years. About 30.4% have 1-3 children, about 40.9% have 4-6 children while 4.2% have 7 and above. The result on the awareness and knowledge of anthropometric status of the adults revealed that majority (86.6%) believe they have a normal weight status, 6.8% believe they are overweight, 5.5% believe they are underweight and 1.0% believe they are obese while 63.5% believe they should maintain their current weight, 5.0% believe they should add a lot of weight, 20.7% believe they should add a little weight. The awareness of biochemical/clinical appraisal showed that Majority (90.3%) don't know what their blood pressure numbers should be, 36.5% don’t know what their blood pressure level should be, 2.6% thought their blood pressure is high while 57.7% thought their blood pressure was normal or okay at the time of the survey. The study showed that about 56.4% of the adults believed their diet was sometimes adequate, 43.0% believed their diet was always adequate while 0.5 believed their diet was never adequate. More than half (59.1%) always had a diverse variety of food, 40.4% sometimes had a diverse variety of food and 0.5% never had a diverse variety of food while a majority (64.3%) always had a healthy diet. The results on the anthropometric indices of the adults (35-60 years) showed that about 57.5% of the participants had a normal weight while less than a quarter of the participants (21.3%) were overweight. The result showed that there was a significant (>0.01) positive correlation between actual body mass index, perceived body mass index (r = 0.332, p = 0.000), and perceived waist circumference (r = 0.135, p =0.008) Therefore the study concludes that poor dietary assessment of the adults is characterized by sometimes adequate and fish and sea food diet as well as an oil and fats diet with high dietary diversity score were observed in this study. Also, the preponderance to underweight and excessive weight gain of some of the adults as well as the sedentary nature of their prevalent occupations (farming, trading and civil service) which meant engagement in physical activity will help maintain energy balance.