ABSTRACT

The study is a cross-sectional study which adopted the use of descriptive and inferential statistics to analyse the data obtained. The study made use of a 251 sample size to determine the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the respondents, food consumption pattern of the respondents, perception of the school food environment, assess the fruit consumption pattern of the respondents and the respondent’s self-efficacy to consume fruits. the data was obtained through the use of a validated semi-structured questionnaire and data was codded into SPSS version 21 and represented using means, frequencies, percentages and tables. A multistage sampling procedure was used to determine the sample size. The results from this study revealed that the majority of the respondents were between the ages of 11-13 years of age, and the majority of the respondents were Christian (94.4%), also respondents from the Igbo tribe were dominant (90.4%). It also indicates that the majority of the respondents were female (60.6%) and male respondents were 39.4%. Furthermore, the result reveals that the majority of their parents were civil servants and resided in a 2–3-bedroom apartment. Also, the respondents with a family size of about 4-6 were dominant (60.2%). The study revealed that the respondents whose food choices were made by their parents and guardians were dominant (86.9%). Also, the majority of the respondent’s food choices are made for them are being done daily (86.9%).  however, the result showed that the respondents who ate 3 times a day were the majority. However, the result depicts that the majority of the respondents’ meals are prepared by their mothers (84.1%). Additionally, the result proved that the majority of the respondents had a strong positive perception towards their school food environment this is revealed by a mean value of 3.44. also, about 88.3% of the respondents had a high perception of their school food environment. it is recommended that parents should feed more proteins to their kids and that the school should keep promoting a healthy eating environment