Childhood obesity is a potential public health problem in Nigeria, as with most other developing countries. While more undernourished children are recorded than over-nourished, the increasing number of overweight children (mostly girls) is enough to call attention to this area of malnutrition. In urban Nigeria, children of working mothers are going to school earlier. Even in the rural areas, primary school enrolment is happening at younger ages than the past. Because childhood is a prime time to prevent years of wrong eating that affects an adult’s nutritional and, as a result, health status, the school environment therefore provides a good ground to cultivate good diet.
According to the World Food Programme, school meal programs are consistently the most popular school-based method of improving childhood nutrition. Schools that gave meals like mid-day lunch or school breakfasts, fortified high-energy biscuits and snacks, take home rations, micronutrient fortification of food and micronutrient supplements (Vitamin A and Iron), and sometimes deformed, had the absolute enrolment increment by 28 percent for girls and 22 percent for boys. Multiple Governments are attempting to make national school feeding program sustainable by linking them to local economic development opportunities. In 2003, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, with WFP and the Millennium Project Task Force in Hunger, launched a pilot Home-Grown School Feeding and Health programme in Nigeria designed to link school feeding to agricultural development through local produce (Bundy et al., 2009). Lagos state, Nigeria’s commercial city, is presently developing the program similar to this. Hopefully, the remaining 34 states and the Federal Capital Territory would buy into this intervention in time. While we still await more government involvement, individuals, corporate organisations and non-governmental organisation could be encouraged to sponsor a school or two.
Objective: The aim of this study is to understand how childhood obesity is seen in Nigeria, and to determine if school meal programmes is considered an appropriate intervention for it.
Study design: This is a face-to-face interview with parents with preschool, nursery and primary schoolchildren ages 3 to 9. Where face-to-face interview is not possible, telephone interviews will be conducted. The schoolchildren would be measured prior to this interview, with the consent of the parents. Parents who decline measurement would still be interviewed.
Research questions:
- Let us assume that scales do not exist, how would you describe your child’s weight?
- What is your child’s typical meal? For breakfast, lunch and dinner?
- Is there any food your child refuses to eat?
- If there any food you absolutely wouldn’t permit for your child to eat, what would be your reason for this?
- If you have ever tried to get your child to eat anything s/he doesn’t like, what has worked and what hasn’t?
- If your child eats better (or worse) when s/he is in the company of her/his mates, what are your thoughts on why this is?
- What would you say makes up a ‘good meal’ for your child?
- What influences do you assume a ‘good meal’ would have in your child’s wellbeing?
- If cost wasn’t a barrier, how often would you give your child a ‘good meal’?
- Do you have any opinions about who could cook the meals your child eats?
- If your child’s school were to charge you, would you be willing to pay for your child to eat meals given at schools?
Note: Am so sorry I'm sending this late. I didn't know what to write (and everyone was sounding so smart and scary). Coming up with open-ended interview questions wasn't as easier as pointing out where someone else didn't, believe me. So, I'm not entirely confident I made sense.
