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

In resource-poor environments across the globe, low-quality monotonous diets are the norm and 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 monitor and evaluate intervention programs. While there have been attempts to design indicators of diet quality for women, the lack of uniformity in approaches has impeded progress. 

To respond to the need for simple indicators to assess the quality of women’s diets, FANTA formed the Women’s Dietary Diversity Project (WDDP) in 2006.  The WDDP is a collaborative research initiative with the broad objective of using existing data sets 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 Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) – and the micronutrient adequacy of women’s diets in resource-poor settings. 

Researchers collaborating in the WDDP are from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), FANTA (now FANTA-2), Akershus University College, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Institute of Research for Development, Iowa State University, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Wageningen University.

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 and in-depth site specific analyses of women’s diet patterns.  With funding through the United States Agency for International Development Bureau for Global Health Office of Health, Infectious Disease, and Nutrition, the WDDP has analyzed data sets from five countries: Bangladesh (rural), Burkina Faso (urban), Mali (urban), Mozambique (rural) and the Philippines (urban/peri-urban). The five individual site reports comprise FANTA-2’s first technical series.

Download the Bangladesh report: Dietary Diversity as a Measure of the Micronutrient Adequacy of Women’s Diets: Results from Rural Bangladesh Site [3.2 mb]

Download the Burkina Faso report: Dietary Diversity as a Measure of the Micronutrient Adequacy of Women’s Diets: Results from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso Site [3.4 mb]

Download the Mali report: Dietary Diversity as a Measure of the Micronutrient Adequacy of Women’s Diets: Results from Bamako, Mali Site [1.7 mb]

Download the Mozambique report: Dietary Diversity as a Measure of the Micronutrient Adequacy of Women’s Diets: Results from Rural Mozambique Site [3.5 mb]

Download the Phillipines report: Dietary Diversity as a Measure of the Micronutrient Adequacy of Women’s Diets: Results from Metropolitan Cebu, Phillippines Site [2.5 mb]