ABSTRACT

This study was carried out to assess the food habits and anthropometric status of adolescent secondary school students in Okposi Development Center, Ohaozara Local Government Area, Ebonyi State. A cross sectional survey was adopted. Three hundred and fifteen (312) respondents were randomly selected from the four schools (152 from government school and 160 from private). Three hundred and fourty six (346) pre-tested and validated questionnaire was used to obtain information’s on food habit from the respondents. Anthropometric characteristics were used to determine the nutritional status of the respondents. These includes weight (kg), height (m²), body mass index (BMI) and mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC). Data obtained was analyzed using SPSS version 22.0 package. Respondents socio-economic characteristics revealed that (43.8% and 40%) of adolescents from both private and government schools, respectively receives less than two hundred naira (#200) as pocket money from their parents weekly, (20% and 18.8%) receives between five hundred and a thousand naira (#501-#1000) whereas (10% and 6.3%) receives more than one thousand naira from both government and private schools respectively. (43.9%) of the respondents parents earn less than twenty thousand naira (#20,000) monthly, 31.4% earns twenty to fifty thousand naira whereas (18.9%) earns fifty thousand one to eighty thousand naira (#50, 001 - #80,000) while the lesser percentage (6.4%) earn above eighty thousand naira.  Lunch was the most skipped meal by the respondents, whereas results showed that (41.4 % and 38.8%) from government and private school respectively ate breakfast 5-6 times weekly. Results on BMI showed that (67.8% and 73.1%) adolescents of both government and private schools were normal. However, 15.8% and 20.0% were underweight, 10.5% and 4.4% were overweight while 6.6% and 2.5% of both government and private were obesed respectively. Mid-upper arm (MUAC) result showed that (22.37% and 17.5%) were moderately malnourished (MAM), (67.76% and 78.75%) were normal whereas (9.87% and 6.17%) of the respondents in both government and private schools were severely malnourished. Monotony of foods was found to be common in the study area. Garri/ soup, rice and yam were the highest foods consumed by the adolescents. This study also revealed that availability of food in the home determines adolescents intake.