ABSTRACT

Food environments is described as ‘the collective physical, economic, policy and socio-cultural surroundings, opportunities and conditions that influence people’s food and beverage choices and nutritional status. This study assessed the impact of personal and external food environment on food consumption pattern and anthropometry of workers in Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State. Cross-sectional descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. Multi-stage sampling techniques was used to select 344 respondents from ten (10) colleges of the university. Data was collected from the respondents with the use of a well-structured and validated questionnaire. The anthropometry assessment of the respondents was done measuring their weight, height, waist circumference, hip circumference, using the measurement to determine their respective BMI and waist-hip ratio comparing them with reference standard. The data collected was analysed using Statistical Package Service Software (SPSS) version 23.0. Descriptive statistics (frequency table) and inferential statistics (chi-square and regression analysis) was used to analyse the data collected. The result of the analysis was presented in frequency and percentage, p-value (P<0.05) was statistically accepted. Findings of the study showed that about 40.7% of the respondents were within the ages of 32-38years. Less than half(45.9%) were academic staff, 27.9% of the respondents were senior non-academic staff and 26.2% were junior staff of the university. About 49.4% of the respondents earn between N60, 000-N119, 999 as monthly income. Some of the respondents claimed that restaurants and buka/mama put was the food outlet available in their place of workand more than half of them claimed that confectionaries and cooked meal are foods that were available in their work place. Less than half (48.8%) of the respondents always have access to food outlets in their work place and it takes them 10 minutes to get to the location of the food outlets. Most of the food available in the food outlets was purchased by the respondents and they had moderate and high desirability of the food available for them. The food that was most consumed by the respondents was the staple food that was readily available in the work place of the respondents.However, the prevalence of overweight found in the study among the respondents was 28.5% and 34.0% of the respondent were obese. More than half (53.2%) of the respondents were high risk of developing central obesity and other health issues while 46.8% were not at risk. Findings of the study further showed that there is no significant relationship anthropometric (BMI) and some food consumed by the respondents. Lastly, Findings of the study showed that food outlet available in work and accessibility of food outlet in work place have impact on food consumed which implies that both external and personal food environment have effect on the food consumed.