The relationship between dietary habits and body-mass index using the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria as the sample.

Abstract

This was a cross sectional survey of selected sample of staff of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, Lagos, conducted in July to August, 2000. Feeding patterns observed among the sampled population showed that most (74.4%) ate three meals while 11.2% ate more than three meals daily. However, lunch was the most common meal eaten away from home by most (59.0%) of the respondents. Most of the respondents were observed to substitute snacks for their lunch (84.3%). Their food consumption pattern revealed that 23.2% consumed cereals daily while only 5.6% of the respondents consumed fruits and only 10.9% affirmed to consuming vegetables daily. Consumption pattern of other foods revealed that 15.6% consumed dairy products daily, meat/fish was daily consumed by only 16.2% and only 10.0% consumed fats and oils daily in the meals. Gender was also observed to influence feeding patterns of the sampled population studied. Most of the men consumed more meals per day than females. Only 46.4% of all the respondents had BMI values within normal acceptable range. Most of the respondents that were underweight were men (91.4%). Blood pressure measurements revealed that most of them had normal systolic (78.3%) and diastolic blood pressure (81.8%). Though 3.9% had severely high systolic blood pressure and 0.7% had severely high diastolic blood pressure. Only 20.5% of the study population had acceptable blood cholesterol levels of which only 61.1% had BMI values within the normal acceptable range. Only 0.8% of the study population had very high blood cholesterol levels with majority of the population 72.7% on the borderline. It is recommended that health and nutrition education be mounted and that periodic anthropometric measurements be used to evaluate the risk of some non-communicable diseases.