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Abstract

The study finds out the prevalence of overweight and obesity among adolescents in public and private school. Obesity is the most serious long term health problem currently facing adolescents and its prevalence increasing worldwide including developing countries. Adolescent is an important growth and development period which has implication for future nutritional status and food consumption .Cross sectional study was carried out among age 11-19 years in both public and private school in urban area of the state. The data was collected using pretest self-administered questionnaire, Anthropometric measurement was also used to examine their nutritional status. Obesity status were determined using BMI cut off point, the overweight was found to be 3.06% among female and 0.6% among male whereas prevalence of obesity was 0.46% in female and non among male. 62.6% snack daily, fruit consumption pattern was low 84.9 % take fruit once daily, 14.4% twice daily while only 0.6% take fruits thrice daily especially after meal, Majority of the respondents mothers had secondary education (13.26%) while 9.53% had tertiary education which was a good pointer that mothers of the respondents were literate. 43.7% spend between 4-5 hours watching television daily after school. Positive association exists between the lifestyle and nutritional status of the respondents. Education effort to improve nutrition knowledge can be incorporated into course curriculum and as well as physical and health education should be made compulsory in all primary and secondary schools and also focus on various components within the system when implementing preventive measure on obesity.

Biography

Oyetunji Akinola is working in Nutrition and Dietetics Department, Federal Polytechnic Institute, Nigeria.
Email:ooakinola@yahoo.com