ABSTRACT

This study examined sustainable food consumption as correlates of civil servant healthy living in Ekiti State. Seven (7) research questions were raised while five null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance.

The correlational survey research design was employed for this study. The population for the study comprised of 3,592,000 civil servants in Ekiti State. A sample size of 399 civil servant from the three senatorial districts in Ekiti State were selected to participates in the study, using a multistage sampling technique. The questionnaire titled “Sustainable food consumption and Healthy Living among Civil Servant Questionnaire” (SEHLCSQ) was developed to elicit information from the respondents.  The instrument contained 45 items with a 4- point rating scale made up of four response options of Strongly Agree (SA)=(4), Agree (A)=(3), Disagree (D)=(2) and Strongly Disagree (SD)=(1). The instrument was subjected to content and face validity by the researcher’s supervisor and one expert in the department of Vocational and Technical Education and an expert in Psychometrics. A reliability of 0.79 was obtained meaning instrument was high in terms of internal consistency. The researcher directly administered SEHLCSQ to the respondents with the aid of six research assistants. The data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation, and independent samples t-test. The null hypothesis 1 was tested using Pearson’s Product-Moment Correlation (PPMC), the null hypotheses 2–4 was tested using independent t-test statistics, while null hypothesis 5 was tested using one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). 

The major findings were that the extent of sustainable food consumption among civil servants in Ekiti State is high, the extent of healthy living among civil servants in Ekiti State is high, and all the components of sustainable food consumption are positively, moderately and significantly correlated to all the components of health living among the civil servants in Ekiti State. The study concludes that sustainable food consumption is a correlate of health living among civil servants in Ekiti State across all components. The study recommends that civil servants in Ekiti State especially within the ages of 18-35 should engage in a more sustainable way of eating by choosing locally sourced foods, minimize the use plastic and adopt the use of leaves in packaging foods.