Nutritional Status of Day and Boarding Female Adolescent Secondary School Students in Warri South Local Government Area of Delta State

Abstract

Nutrient intake during adolescence is of critical importance because this period is characterized by an exceptionally rapid rate of growth. The poor nutritional status of adolescents, especially girls, has important implications in terms of physical work capacity and adverse reproductive outcomes. Thus, a study on the nutritional patterns of adolescent girls is imperative to improve their growth rate and reproductive outcomes. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate the nutritional status of day and boarding students in public secondary schools in Warri South Local Government Area of Delta State. The study was a comparative cross sectional study which sampled a total of 326 students from secondary schools in Warri South L. G. A. of Delta State. A semi-structured questionnaire was self-administered to obtain information on respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics, nutritional pattern and factors influencing adolescent nutrition. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square test and ANOVA were used to analyse the data with level of significance set at 0.05. The results show that the mean age of the respondents was 12.27±1.79 years with majority in the age bracket of between 10-15 years of age and more as day students 58.90% than boarding students 41.10%. Assessment of the nutritional status of day and boarding students show that 11.20% of the boarding students were underweight as compared to 9.40% of the day students, 87.30% were of normal weight as compared to 80.70% of the day students. However, only 4.20% of the day students were overweight as compared to 1.50% of the boarding students and 5.70% of the day students were obese as compared to none among the boarding students. Factors that significantly influences the nutritional status of the students were mothers level of education and occupation, non-palatability of the food in the hostels and skipping of meals especially by the boarders (P<0.05). Therefore, concerted efforts should be made by all stakeholders in the education ministry (Government, School Authorities and Parents) to improve the meal of the students residing in the hostels in secondary schools nationwide; while parents should continually make it a duty to improve the meals of their children at home especially the adolescent girls who are still growing in order to enhance their physical work capacity, reproductive and pregnancy outcomes and birth weight.