Gender, age and religion as determinants of eating habit of youth in ikenne local government of Ogun state, Nigeria.

Abstract

The study examined the influence of Age, Gender and Religion on eating habit of youth. It made use of simple random technique in selecting 400 youths within Ikenne local government of Ogun State, Nigeria. The age range of the respondents was between 15 years and 40 years with the mean age of 25.2 and standard deviation of 3.291. The ex-post facto research design was employed. A 20 item questions by Snell &Johnson (1997) named psychology of eating questionnaire (PEQ) was adopted with four subscales and used in generating data for the study. Data analysis involved the use of analysis of variance, and independent t-test. The results indicated that the three variables age, gender and religion taken together accounted for 30.2% of the variance in eating habit pattern and were found to the significant with {F3.397} = 5.214 . On the basis of this finding, it is then suggested that: Eating habit is affected by gender and age, nutritionist, social workers and those concerned with health should create more awareness on the poor eating habit as regards to healthy living.

Key words: Gender, Age, Religion, and eating habit