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FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY AMONG ADOLESCENTS

Overweight and obesity in adolescent is on the increase and has become a serious problem to the society in recent times. This study determines associated factors of overweight and obesity among adolescents in selected secondary schools in Jos North, Plateau State. A multistage sampling technique was used to select 292 adolescents (140 males and 152 females) A structured questionnaire with items selected from modified Food Frequency Consumption Questionnaire and modified Physical Activity Questionnaire for adolescent (PAQ-A) was adapted to collect data. An analog bathroom scale was used to measure students’ weight to the nearest 0.1 kilogram and a meter rule was used to measure the students’ height to the nearest 0.1 meters. BMI of students were calculated and categorized using WHO (2007) BMI for age and sex cut-offs. Statistical Package
for Social Science (SPSS) version 23.0 was used to analyse data. The result of this study showed that the prevalence of overweight among adolescents in selected secondary schools in Jos North, Plateau State is low (8.9%). This study observed that the associated behavioural factors in terms of nutritional intake among adolescents include consumption of breakfast, adding 1 or 2 teaspoon of sugar to beverage, eating fried food 1 or 2 times a week, and sometimes take snacks and processed food. The associated factors in terms of physical activities involve regular body exercise, walking and duration of physical activities is less than 60mins. The study reveals that there is a statistically
significant (P>0.05) association between physical activity and selected characteristics such as eating processed food (P=0.000) snacks (P=0.032) and gender (P=0.016) but there is no significant association between weight and exercise (P=0.133) among adolescents in selected secondary schools. IT is therefore recommended that parents and government should be encouraged to plan for healthy food and make it available for students

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