Abstract

Nutrition may be defined as the process, act, or study of how living things use nutrients for energy, growth, and maintenance. Contrary to widely held notions, malnutrition may be caused by people choosing to eat the wrong types of food, rather than a lack of what to eat. The objectives of the study were to describe the dietary pattern of primary school pupils in an urban and rural local government area of Lagos State, Nigeria and to examine the relationship between dietary pattern and prevalence of malnutrition. This cross–sectional comparative study adopted a multistage random sampling which included all children aged between six and twelve years in primary schools in randomly selected urban and rural local government areas (LGAs) in Lagos State.  Using interviewer-administered questionnaire, information on socio-demographics, dietary history/pattern, food frequency and anthropometric measurements of selected pupils was obtained. Obtained data were analysed with standardized nutritional indices, and treatment means were compared with bivariate analysis at 95% level of significance. While underweight (49.6% v 15%) and wasting (24.2% v 13.6%) pupils were more prevalent in the rural areas, overweight (15.1% v 13.2%) pupils were more prevalent in the urban areas. Eating patterns among pupils living in the rural areas were significantly different from those living in urban areas, especially with respect to vegetable, snack and fizzy drink consumption. Comprehensive nutritional education programme for pupils, their parents and teachers should be introduced to promote nutritional health.

Key words: Nutrition, nutritional status, rural, urban, nutritional pattern.