ABSTRACT

Food security is also said to exist when all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active life. This work was aimed at assessing food and nutrition security level of households living in urban setting of Portharcourt. The study was a descriptive cross-sectional study. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select a total of 390 households. Data on socioeconomic characteristics, dietary diversity, food security, factors affecting food security were collected using structured and validated questionnaire. Anthropometric status of mother and infants 0-5 years were determined using standard procedures. The SPSS version 20.0 computer programme was used to analyze the data. The findings of the study revealed that a good number (34.0%) of the respondents were within the age range of 31 - 40 years, where majority (79.5%) of the households head are men. A good nwnber of them where traders (30.5%) and civil servants (38.7%), while majority of them (79.0%) were educated. The findings of the study showed that over 50.8% of the households are food secure while 23% were mildly food insecure, 17.0% were moderately food insecure and only very small portion (8.8%) of them were severely food insecure. Major factors affecting food security were found to include cost (32.1%), health implication (21.8%), availability and accessibility (11%). The findings from this study revealed that 7 .1 % of the infants were stunted, 18.8% were underweight and 10.4% were wasted. The study also indicated that there is a strong significant relationship between most socioeconomic characteristics of households in Portharcourt and food security measures. There is a significant relationship between food security of households and their occupation (p = 0.012), monthly income (p = 0.000) and family size (p = 0.001) and level of education. Similarly, food insecurity was also significantly related to monthly income (p=0.000) and family size (p = 0.007). Enlightenment campaigns should be conducted to educate the urban households on how to improve and sustain food security in their respective households.