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Effect of Nutrition Education on Dietary Diversity among Female Undergraduates in Nigeria

Abstract

Adequate and diverse dietary intake is essential for maintaining good health, supporting physical and cognitive functioning, and preventing nutritional deficiencies among young adults. Female undergraduates may be vulnerable to poor dietary diversity because of financial constraints, busy academic schedules, limited cooking facilities, dependence on convenient foods, inadequate nutrition knowledge, peer influence, and changing eating patterns. Poor dietary diversity may increase the risk of inadequate intake of essential vitamins, minerals, protein, and other nutrients and may contribute to undernutrition or other forms of malnutrition. Nutrition education provides an opportunity to improve students' understanding of balanced diets, food groups, nutrient requirements, meal planning, healthy food choices, and practical strategies for achieving dietary diversity within available resources. Against this background, this study investigates the effect of nutrition education on dietary diversity among female undergraduates in Nigeria. The study will be anchored on the Health Belief Model, Social Cognitive Theory, and Theory of Planned Behavior. The Health Belief Model explains how female undergraduates' perceptions of nutritional risks, perceived benefits of healthy eating, perceived barriers, and cues to action may influence their dietary behaviours. Social Cognitive Theory emphasizes knowledge, self-efficacy, behavioural reinforcement, social support, and environmental influences in the adoption and maintenance of healthy eating practices. The Theory of Planned Behavior explains how attitudes toward dietary diversity, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and behavioural intentions may influence students' food choices. Collectively, these theoretical perspectives provide a suitable framework for explaining how nutrition education may influence dietary diversity among female undergraduates in Nigeria. The study will adopt a quantitative quasi-experimental or analytical cross-sectional research design. The study population will comprise female undergraduate students enrolled in selected universities and other tertiary institutions across Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique will be used to select states, institutions, faculties, departments, and eligible female students. Nutrition education will be assessed using indicators such as exposure to structured nutrition education sessions, frequency and duration of education, knowledge of food groups, nutrient requirements, balanced diets, meal planning, portion selection, healthy food choices, food budgeting, preparation methods, and practical strategies for improving dietary diversity. Dietary diversity will be assessed using appropriate dietary diversity indicators based on consumption of different food groups over a defined reference period, including grains and other staple foods, legumes and nuts, dairy products, eggs, meat and other animal-source foods, fruits, vegetables, and other locally relevant food groups. Data will be collected using structured questionnaires, food-frequency or dietary-recall instruments, and appropriate dietary diversity assessment tools. Descriptive statistics will be used to summarize participants' characteristics, exposure to nutrition education, and dietary diversity patterns. Inferential statistical techniques, including chi-square tests, t-tests, correlation analysis, and logistic or multiple regression analysis where appropriate, will be used to determine the effect of nutrition education on dietary diversity. Where a quasi-experimental design is adopted, dietary diversity scores before and after the educational intervention will be compared to determine changes associated with the intervention. Diagnostic tests will also be conducted to assess the reliability, validity, and robustness of the findings. The study is expected to find that nutrition education has a significant positive effect on dietary diversity among female undergraduates in Nigeria. Female students exposed to structured and practical nutrition education are expected to demonstrate higher dietary diversity scores and greater consumption of foods from a wider range of food groups than students with limited exposure to nutrition education. Nutrition education may improve students' understanding of nutrient requirements, encourage healthier food choices, strengthen meal-planning skills, and demonstrate affordable ways of combining locally available foods to achieve a more diverse diet. However, financial limitations, food prices, availability of nutritious foods, academic workload, limited cooking facilities, cultural preferences, peer influence, and access to healthy food options may limit the translation of nutrition knowledge into dietary practices. The study therefore expects accessible, practical, culturally appropriate, and financially realistic nutrition education to contribute significantly to improved dietary diversity among female undergraduates in Nigeria. The study is expected to contribute to the literature on nutrition education, dietary diversity, nutritional health, female undergraduates, young adult nutrition, food choices, health promotion, and public health in Nigeria. The findings will provide useful information to the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Federal Ministry of Education, universities, tertiary institution health centres, nutritionists, dietitians, public health practitioners, student welfare departments, women's health organizations, development partners, and policymakers regarding strategies for improving nutrition among university students. The study will also provide evidence-based recommendations for integrating nutrition education into tertiary institution health programmes, developing affordable and locally relevant dietary guidance, strengthening campus nutrition counselling, improving access to healthy food choices, promoting practical meal-planning skills, and addressing socioeconomic and environmental barriers to dietary diversity among female undergraduates across Nigeria.

Keywords: Nutrition education, dietary diversity, female undergraduates, nutritional health, healthy eating, food choices, meal planning, young adult nutrition, health promotion, nutrition knowledge, Nigeria, public health.