Nutrition knowledge, complementary feeding practices and use of food labels amongst young mothers in Owerri Metropolis

Abstract

Background: Maternal nutrition knowledge is important for the selection of appropriate foods that will meet the nutritional demands of infants.

Objective: To evaluate the nutrition knowledge, complementary feeding practices and use of food label among young mothers in Owerri Metropolis.

Methods: It was a cross sectional survey comprising of 300 mothers between 18-30 years. Respondents for the study were randomly drawn from mothers attending maternal and child health clinic in five hospitals and five maternity clinics as well as five private crèche and five public crèche in Owerri metropolis, Imo state. A well-structured and validated questionnaire was administered to collect information on socio economic data, nutritional knowledge, complementary feeding practices and use of food label. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson's bivariate correlations with SPSS version 21.0.

Results: Approximately 36.3% of the respondents had Masters degree, 58.0% were civil servants while 66.7% had good nutrition knowledge. Approximately 50.7% of the respondents introduced complementary foods at 3 months, pap was the major complementary food given by 65.3% of the respondents, 72% stopped breastfeeding at 9-12 months while 54.3% feed their infants up to 7 times daily. Most (95.3%) of the respondents read food labels, 60.0% regard food label to be very important while 56.3% seek for best before date.

Conclusion: This study revealed that more than half of the mothers in Owerri metropolis have good nutrition knowledge, however the complementary feeding practices and utilization of food labels are still poor.