Journal of Nutrition Special Supplement, November 2010

Validation of Dietary Diversity as a Measure of the Micronutrient Adequacy of Women’s Diets

To respond to the need for simple yet high-quality data on women’s dietary diversity, FANTA formed the Women’s Dietary Diversity Project (WDDP) in 2005. The WDDP is a collaborative research initiative with the broad objective of using existing datasets with dietary intake data from 24-hour recall to analyze the relationship between simple indicators of dietary diversity, such as could be derived from the DHS, and the micronutrient adequacy of women’s diets in resource-poor settings.

The research carried out under the WDDP advances knowledge about women’s nutrient intakes in resource-poor settings and the relationship between indicators of dietary diversity and the micronutrient adequacy of women’s diets, specifically. Work carried out under the WDDP includes the development of a standard analysis protocol, a multi-site investigation into the performance of dietary diversity indicators as a measure of micronutrient adequacy, in-depth site-specific analyses of women’s diet patterns and determinants of micronutrient adequacy, a review of the current state of knowledge about women’s micronutrient intakes, and methodologically-oriented research to inform promising practices related to the collection and analysis of data on diets. The datasets analyzed for the WDDP are from sites in Bangladesh (rural), Burkina Faso (urban), Mali (urban), Mozambique (rural) and the Philippines (urban/peri-urban).

Seven articles have been published in a Special Supplement to the Journal of Nutrition with funding from USAID’s Office of Health, Infectious Diseases and Nutrition (HIDN) in the Bureau for Global Health. Collectively, these articles report on the methods and findings of research to develop simple measures of women’s diet quality in developing countries. The articles build on FANTA-2’s Women’s Dietary Diversity technical series, a set of five reports published in December 2009, that provide site-specific descriptive information about women’s dietary patterns and nutrient intake.

Developing Simple Measures of Women's Diet Quality in Developing Countries: Overview

Women in Resource-Poor Settings Are at Risk of Inadequate Intakes of Multiple Micronutrients

Simple Food Group Diversity Indicators Predict Micronutrient Adequacy of Women's Diets in 5 Diverse, Resource-Poor Settings

Food Groups Associated With a Composite Measure of Probability of Adequate Intake of 11 Micronutrients in the Diets of Women in Urban Mali

Micronutrient Adequacy of Women's Diet in Urban Burkina Faso Is Low

Food Group Diversity Indicators Derived from Qualitative List-Based Questionnaire Misreported Some Foods Compared to Same Indicators Derived from Quantitative 24-Hour Recall in Urban Burkina Faso

A Measurement Error Approach to Assess the Association between Dietary Diversity, Nutrient Intake, and Mean Probability of Adequacy

Dietary Diversity as a Measure of the Micronutrient Adequacy of Women’s Diets in Resource-Poor Areas: Results from Five Countries