Nutritional Knowledge, Dietary Practices, and Associated Factors Among Rural Married Women of Reproductive Age (15-49 Years) in Benue State, Nigeria

Abstract

Inadequate dietary intake during pregnancy would however result to nutrients deficiency. This may cause the fetus to receive suboptimal micro and macro nutrient, resulting to inadequate intrauterine growth and development, inherited malformations, preterm deliveries, pregnancy complications, family instability and retard national productivity and development. The study assessed the nutrition knowledge and associated factors of 400 rural married women of childbearing age (15-49 years) randomly selected from 8 rural Tiv communities in two senatorial zones (A and B) of Benue State, Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive cross-sectional survey design. Multistage random sampling technique was used to select the sample for the study. The analysis of data was done using descriptive and inferential statistics of the Statistical Product for Service Solution (SPSS) version 21.0. The nutritional knowledge indicates that, respondents had fair nutrition knowledge. However, poor dietary practices were established among participants in this study based on the mean value (32.75%) of dietary practices. Education; occupation of the respondents and their husbands, as well as household income, were significant (P<0.05) socio-economic determinants of nutritional knowledge in this study, while age, marital status, religion and household size were not significant (P>0.05) socio-economic determinants of nutritional knowledge. It was also found out that marital status, occupation of respondents and their husbands, as well as household income, were significant (P< 0.05) socioeconomic determinants of dietary practices of the women. However, age, religion, educational qualification and household size were not significantly (P>0.05) associated with the dietary practices of respondents. Strategies aimed at improving the nutrition knowledge and dietary practices of rural women are essential to promote mother and child health, and ensure a healthy and productive society. These findings underscore the urgent need for targeted nutrition education interventions, poverty alleviation programmes, and strengthened girl-child education policies to improve the nutritional well-being of rural women of reproductive age in Nigeria and similar low-resource settings.