Dietary Diversity as a Measure of Women's Diet Quality in Resource-Poor Areas: Results from Rural Bangladesh Site

In developing countries, where low-quality, monotonous grain- and tuber-based diets are the norm, the risk for micronutrient deficiencies is high. Women of reproductive age are among those most likely to suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, yet in developing countries there are very little data on women’s micronutrient status and the quality of women’s diets. Simple indicators are urgently needed to characterize diet quality, assess key diet problems (such as lack of animal products and/or fruits and vegetables) and identify subgroups of women that are particularly at risk of micronutrient deficiencies. Simple indicators are also needed to assess constraints to improving diet quality and to monitor and evaluate intervention programs. While there have been attempts to design indicators of diet quality, the lack of uniformity in approaches has impeded progress.

FANTA is working with researchers from IFPRI, Institut de Recherche de Développement, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of North Carolina and University of Wageningen on a Women’s Dietary Diversity Project (WDDP), whose broad objective is to use existing data sets with dietary intake data from 24-hour recall to analyze the relationship between simple indicators of diet diversity–such as those that could be derived from the new Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)–and dietary quality for women.

With funding from USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, the WDDP is analyzing data sets from five countries: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique and the Philippines. The final report for Bangladesh indicates that a 9 and 13 dietary diversity food group indicator (with a 15g minimum consumption required) can predict the micronutrient adequacy of the diet of non-pregnant, non-lactating women of reproductive age with acceptable sensitivity and specificity.