Different types of food. 

Context in source publication

Context 1

... were recorded; therefore, collected data were only used for assessing the frequency of food or meals. Body Mass Index (BMI) is an assessment tool that has been used to judge nutritional status of individuals and of a population, indicating thinness and excessive fatness. This index incorporates height and weight in the estimation of critical fat values at which the risk of disease increases (Martinez et al., 2005). According to BMI, the lowest risk for chronic disease is in the 18.5 to 24.9 range which is classified as normal weight as oppose to values from 25 and above classified as overweight (WHO, 1990). According to National Institute of Health USA, mortality rates are 25% higher for individuals with a BMI between 25-30 and 50-100% higher for those individuals with a BMI above 30 that is those considered obese (WHO, 1990). Analyses were performed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 12. Data analysis included descriptive statistics of the respondents. Means, standard deviations and percentages were computed. Differences were analysed using Pearson‟s chi -squared test, and considered statistically significant when the p- value was less than 0.05. In this study 40% of the participants were of the North region while 60% of the Far north, with 47.6% being female and 52.4 % male, all belonging to 3 major religions groupings: Christianity, Islam and Animist (Table 1). Participants in this study were not all natives of these regions (33.3%). They are known to have moved for various reasons: marriage, search for greener pastures, farming, movements due to career and many others. Data in Fig. 1 shows that the population of this region consumes mainly cereals (99.6%) and green leafy vegetables (99.2%). The number of people with intake of Meat and/or fish (17.8%) and tuber (10.7%) is lower. In the North, the percentage consumption of cereals, vegetables, meat and/or fish, and tubers are 99% 98%, 29%, and 18.25% respectively while in the Far-North, these percentages stand at 100%, 100%, 10.33 %, and 5.66% and respectively (Fig. 2). From this data it can be deduced that the feeding habits of people from North region were significant differently from those from the Far-North region ( χ 2 = 72.65, p <0.05) (Table 2). As shown in Fig. 3, there is no significant difference between the food habits of people from the urban zone and those from the rural zone in the Sudano-sahel region ( χ 2 =1.09, p = 0.79). Generally, the people from the urban zone consumed meat and/or fish (52.25%), legumes (50.60%), tubers (57. 01%) and cereals (50.70%). The consumption of those in the rural zone is 47.75%, 49.39%, 42.99%, and 49.30% from meat and/or fish, legumes, tubers and cereals respectively. The results obtained show that all participants consume vegetables and cereals on a daily basis while the intake of meat and/or fish and tubers stands at 10.8% and 0% respectively. Some participants however ate the above food items once a week: 26.5% eat meat and/or fish, 0.1% took milk and 0.3% consumed tubers. Nevertheless these foods are not completely under looked in the feeding of the rest of the population since an increase was recorded in the number of people who eat them on feast days and other rare/special occasions (27%, 28.6% and 60% for meat and/or fish, milk and tubers respectively). Surprisingly, some participants in this region consume no meat and/or fish (36%), milk (27%) or tubers (40%) at all. Generally the frequency of vegetable and cereal consumption was higher than tuber, milk and meat and/or fish (Fig. 4). In general 9.9% of the population assessed were underweight, 67.4% had normal weight, while 16.9% were overweight and 5.8% obese. From amongst the female population, 10.5% were underweight, 65.84% were of normal weight, 18.70% were overweight and 4.96 % obese. For males, 9.24, 69.12, 14.91, and 6.72% are underweight, normal weigh, overweight and obese respectively. No significant differences were observed between the two sexes ( χ 2 =0.85, P=0.84) and age groups ( χ 2 =4.06, p =0.666) (Figs. 5 and 6). However significant variations in IMC were observed between the people from the urban zone and those from the rural zone ( χ 2 =17.33, p = 0.0006) (Fig. ...