ABSTRACT

The school food environment plays a role in adolescents’ dietary behaviors and act as a potential risk factor for adolescent diet. This study assessed the food environment, snacking behaviour and anthropometric status of secondary school students in Umuahia South Local Government Area, Abia State. The study was a descriptive cross-sectional study. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select a total of 197 secondary school students. Data on socio demographic characteristics of the students, socio economic characteristic of their parents, school food environment, snacking habit and anthropometric status of the students were collected using structured and validated questionnaire. The IBM SPSS version 22.0 computer programme was used to analyze the data. Data obtained were described using frequency and percentage. Chi square was used to analyse the relationship between snacking behaviour and anthropometric status of the respondents. Pearson correlation was used to analyze the relationship between food environment and snacking behaviour of the students. Significant relationship was judged at p ≤ 0.05. Most (75.6%) of the students were female between 10-18 years. The food outlets available in the schools were canteen (47.7%), buka/mama put (11.7%), fast food restaurants (6.1%) and fruit and vegetable hawkers (34.5%). Some (41.1%) of the outlets sell healthy snacks like groundnuts and moi moi while some (27.4%) sell confectionaries, soft drinks and cooked foods (9.1%). Majority (87.2%) of these food outlets are very assessable to the students and the time required to get to most (67.0%) outlets were less than five minutes. Some (44.2%) of these food outlets usually open during the morning hours from 7am-3pm. More than half (67.5%) of the students eat three times a day and the meals were mostly prepared by their mothers (62.9%). The readily available snacks consumed by the students at home are cookies (pies, cakes or snack cakes) (43.1%), chips (e.g. potato, plantain, yam chips) (83.8%), ice cream or frozen yogurt (31.5%) and chocolate bars (21.3%). The prevalence of stunting, thinness, overweight and obesity among the respondents were 4.1%, 8.6%, 21.8% and 6.6% respectively. There was a significant relationship between number of times sodas or soft drinks was consumed with meals in the past one week and anthropometric status of the respondent (p=0.002). There was a significant relationship between spontaneous appeals to food (p=0.000), consumption of cheap snacks (p=0.000) and food available in food outlets in school. There was also a significant relationship between convenience of food (p=0.046), buying food that are close (p=0.010), consumption of snacks (0.014) and accessibility of food. Interventions that will support availability and accessibility of healthier food in the school food environment are therefore required. Healthy food provisioning in schools can be achieved through the introduction of school feeding programs, school gardens, and healthy food supplies in school tuck shops/cafeteria.