Importance of Milk Consumption in the Diet of Secondary School Students in Nigeria

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the importance of milk consumption in the diet of secondary school students in Ibadan North and Akinyele local government areas of Oyo State, Nigeria. Questionnaire was used to elicit information from the students and simple randomly sampling was used to select forty students each from public secondary schools students of urban and rural areas and also forty students from private secondary school in both rural and urban areas. The sample consisted of equa l number of males and females. Frequency distributions and percentages were calculated. Student's t-test was used to determine whether there is significant difference between milk consumption and developmental indices of students. The findings revealed that respondents' preference was more to liquid than powdered milk while the purchasing power was also in-like manner. The private secondary school students had the highest daily consumption rate and purchasing power than the public school students. The results further revealed that there were statistical differences in height of students (both sexes) of the rural and urban secondary school students while there was no significant difference in the weight and forearms of private and the public secondary school students in both urban and rural. Milk is important in the diet of secondary school students since they are in their developmental stages of life, therefore the study recommends the introduction of school milk programme sponsored by government. Also, nutritional education should be introduced to academic curriculum of secondary school.