Assessment of Dietary Pattern, Health Implication and the Nutritional Status of Clinical Medical Students of a Tertiary Institution in Southeast Nigeria

The dietary pattern in any population is an indicator for the general well-being and the extent of their risks to have lifestyle disorders. These include diabetes mellitus, dyslipidaemia, hypertension and coronary heart disease, which are the main cause of death worldwide. Medical students; representing part of the young age population of the community, and as future doctors, for different reasons are prone to eating unhealthy foods and to have bad health habits during their college years which might affect their wellbeing and increase the risk of lifestyle disorders. The objective of this study is to determine the dietary pattern of clinical medical students of Nnamdi Azikiwe University (NAU), Nnewi campus Nigeria, and how it affects their nutritional status. This is a cross sectional study which involved 220 clinical medical students of NAU, Nnewi campus. A 220 objective self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. In this study, the entire respondents, 98.6%, were aware of what a balanced diet is, yet majority of them have a poor dietary habit, as 50.9% eat twice daily, 37.7% 3 times daily, while 5.5% eat more than three times daily. Their diet was mainly fast foods, fries, snacks, and soft drinks. This, thus, affected their nutritional status, with 25.0% having poor dietary habit, 74.1% with moderate dietary habit and 0.9% with good dietary habit. 27.3% of the respondents being overweight, 6.4% class 1obesity, and 60.5% were of normal weight. This study showed that while the respondents were aware of what a balanced diet is, they rarely consumed a balanced meal. Thus, it is imperative to not only educate them, but also, formulate a strategy to ensure the implantation and practice of eating a balanced meal, so as to not only forestall lifestyle disorders, but also to be able to educate their patients in the future, creating a healthy community and nation at large. The usual lifestyle of food tickets and meal in the university should be resuscitated especially within the study population.