Food Consumption Pattern and Nutritional Status of Bank Workers, in Ilaro, Ogun State

Abstract

Malnutrition which is described as an imbalance in dietary intake occurs when a person has too much or too little food or essential nutrients. Bank workers have very tight schedules at the workplace which could affect their food habits and nutritional status. This study becomes necessary to assess the frequency of food consumption and nutritional status of bank workers within Ilaro town. It is a descriptive and cross-sectional study involving 200 respondents selected from bank employees in the Ilaro Area of Ogun State using a multi-stage sampling procedure. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to acquire information on socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics while Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) was used to obtain information on the pattern of food consumption among respondents. Height and weight were measured and were used to determine the Body Mass Index of respondents while SPSS v.20.0 was used for data analysis. The majority of the respondents 35.0% were between 41-60 years old and were male, 78.0%, were from Yoruba 74.0%, 60.5% practised Christian religion and 52.5% received N101,000 to N 150,0000 as their estimated monthly allowance. The prevalence of Body Mass Index for overweight, normal, obese and underweight were 26.0%, 44.5%, 15.5%, and 13.0% respectively. Mean weight and height for males were 60.86±14.04 and 1.59±0.082 while females' mean weight and height of 61.84±15.98 and 1.58±0.067 respectively. The food consumption pattern shows that the majority of the respondents consumed cereal-based food, junk and seasonal roots and tubers products, except for gari and sweets which were consumed by more than 35% of the respondents daily. Statistically, there was a significant association between BMI and the socio-demographic characteristics (age and number of children) of the respondents. The analysis of the foods consumed by the respondents also reflected high consumption of starchy convenience foods and junk among the respondents. The study recommends the need for the spread of the knowledge of basic concepts about healthy feeding among bank workers.