Effects of Nutrition Education among Pregnant Women using Fruits and Vegetables for the achievement of MDG5 in Odogbolu LGA, Ogun State (Published)
Background: Nutrition education being a component of health education is propitious to create awareness on how to source, prepare, combine and use food resources for promoting good health among all groups of human beings; especially pregnant women who need adequate nutrition for their physiological needs and improve the health of both the mother and fetus. Studies have suggested that women have low dietary intake of fruits and vegetables. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a framework globally agreed for measuring development, progress, and poverty reduction through focusing efforts on achieving significant measureable improvement in people’s lives. One of the components of MDG5 is nutrition in pregnancy; this component is the main focus of this study. Method: a quasi-experimental study for quantitative method adopting pre-and post test control experimental analysis was used while 194 pregnant women were purposively selected from 11 randomly selected antenatal clinics in Odogbolu local government area to participate. The nutrition intervention was for 3 months. FGD together with structured-validated questionnaire administered before and after the intervention were used to collect data. ANCOVA was used to test the two hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level.Result: There were significant effects of the intervention on the knowledge (F (2.174) = 1554.466, P <.05) and attitude (F (2.134) = 19.866, P <.05) of the women on fruits and vegetables consumption. The findings revealed a positive effect of the intervention; the participants were relatively aware of the importance of fruit and vegetables consumption in pregnancy after the intervention. Conclusion: The nutrition education intervention appears to have changed the attitude of pregnant women after the post test evaluation. Pregnant women apparently consumed more fruits and vegetables than they were doing before the intervention. Therefore, intensive health education should continuously be given to pregnant women on the value of fruit and vegetable.
Keywords: Education, Intervention, Nutrition, Pregnant Women, Vegetables