Improving diet quality and micronutrient nutrition: Homestead food production in Bangladesh PDF Download

Author: Lora Iannotti, Kenda Cunningham, Marie Ruel
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44

View

Book Description

Author: Lora Iannotti
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 37

View

Book Description
A critical yet often overlooked component of food security is diet quality. Even households who have access to sufficient amounts of food and calories may still lack essential micronutrients, increasing their risk for both short- and long-term health and development consequences. Interventions that address poor diet quality and related deficiencies of vitamin A, zinc, iron, among others, are important for achieving full food security in vulnerable populations. The homestead food production (HFP) program, introduced in Bangladesh by Helen Keller International nearly two decades ago, promotes an integrated package of home gardening, small livestock production and nutrition education with the aim of increasing household production, availability, and consumption of micronutrient-rich foods and improving the health and nutritional status of women and children. Implemented by NGO partners and the Government of Bangladesh, HFP has expanded its reach into over one half of the country's subdistricts and is now operating in several countries of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence shows that HFP in Bangladesh has improved food security for nearly 5 million vulnerable people in diverse agroecological zones. This has been achieved through: increased production and consumption of micronutrient-rich foods; increased income from gardens and expenditures on micronutrient-rich foods; women's empowerment; enhanced partner capacity; and community development.

Author: Mostak Ahmed
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 8

View

Book Description
This paper deals with diet quality and micronutrient nutrition as an essential yet overlooked component of food security- i.e. safe and nutritious food. Vitamin and mineral deficiency (VMD) is at the core of massive malnutrition in the world today. 'Hidden hunger' is a chronic lack of micronutrients which is basically a problem of balanced and healthy diet, affecting two billion people worldwide from reaching their physical and mental potential. Several strategies to combat VMD have been undertaken in Bangladesh on both a short and interim measures. However, agricultural intervention through dietary diversification has been found to be the most viable strategy in the long-term and on a sustainable basis. There is sufficient evidence to believe that higher intake of locally available fruits and vegetables on a regular basis might reverse the VMD. The Homestead Food Production (HFP) program in Bangladesh promotes an integrated package of home gardening, with the aim of increasing the health and nutritional status of women and children. This paper presents major finding derived from an empirical study of HFP in the northern Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs), Bangladesh, involving 120 households represented by ethnic women of child-bearing age. The underlying objective is being to provide an effective approach to sustainable nutrition solution in the country. The Chittagong Hill-Tracts is a classic example of an underdeveloped region with an overwhelmingly rural, low income agro-based economy, seeking to achieve basic goals of development in both social and economic terms. There is ample evidence to show that HFP program in Bangladesh has improved food security for more than 5 million vulnerable people in diverse agro-ecological zone. In the study area, the HFP program has significantly improved the food security status of the sample population in terms of production, diversification, consumption and sale of nutritious foods.

Author: Ahmed, Akhter
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 54

View

Book Description
A growing body of evidence indicates that agricultural development programs can potentially improve production diversity and diet quality of poor rural households; however, less is known about which aspects of program design are effective in diverse contexts and feasible to implement at scale. We address this issue through an evaluation of the Agriculture, Gender, and Nutrition Linkages (ANGeL) project. ANGeL is a randomized controlled trial testing what combination of trainings focused on agricultural production, nutrition behavior change communication, and gender sensitization were most effective in improving production diversity and diet quality among rural farm households in Bangladesh. We find that trainings focused on agriculture improved production diversity in terms of greater production of fruits and vegetables grown on the homestead, eggs, dairy, and fish; adding trainings on nutrition and gender did not significantly change these impacts. Trainings focused on both agriculture and nutrition showed the largest impacts on diet quality, with evidence indicating that households in this arm also significantly increased consumption out of homestead production for fruits and vegetables, eggs, dairy, and fish. Findings indicate that agricultural training that promotes production of diverse, high-value, nutrient-rich foods can increase production diversity, and this can improve diet quality, but diet quality impacts are larger when agricultural training is combined with nutrition training. Relative to treatments combining agriculture and nutrition training, we find no significant impact of adding the gender sensitization on our measures of production diversity or diet quality.

Author: de Brauw, Alan
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 62

View

Book Description
The national food system of Bangladesh has made substantial progress since experiencing famine in 1974, soon after independence. After the famine, the government placed a strong emphasis on policies required to attain grain self-sufficiency; since attaining self-sufficiency, the production system, policies related to it, and resulting diets have begun to diversify. Nonetheless, undernutrition remains a problem, and fruit and vegetable consumption are inadequate for most people relative to international recommendations. Moreover, as the food system has begun to transition towards a modern one, challenges related to food safety and perceived food adulteration have begun to rise. Further, increased processed food intakes are potentially associated with existing rising overweight and obesity status. Both government interventions and innovations are needed to help shift the national food system to improve nutrient-dense food availability, particularly among the poor, and to limit the increase in processed food consumption.

Author: Mara van den Bold
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 80

View

Book Description
Many development programs that aim to alleviate poverty and improve investments in human capital consider women’s empowerment a key pathway by which to achieve impact and often target women as their main beneficiaries. Despite this, women’s empowerment dimensions are often not rigorously measured and are at times merely assumed. This paper starts by reflecting on the concept and measurement of women’s empowerment and then reviews some of the structural interventions that aim to influence underlying gender norms in society and eradicate gender discrimination. It then proceeds to review the evidence of the impact of three types of interventions—cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs—on women’s empowerment, nutrition, or both. Qualitative evidence on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs generally points to positive impacts on women’s empowerment, although quantitative research findings are more heterogenous. CCT programs produce mixed results on long-term nutritional status, and very limited evidence exists of their impacts on micronutrient status. The little evidence available on unconditional cash transters (UCT) indicates mixed impacts on women’s empowerment and positive impacts on nutrition; however, recent reviews comparing CCT and UCT programs have found little difference in terms of their effects on stunting and they have found that conditionality is less important than other factors, such as access to healthcare and child age and sex. Evidence of cash transfer program impacts depending on the gender of the transfer recipient or on the conditionality is also mixed, although CCTs with non-health conditionalities seem to have negative impacts on nutritional status. The impacts of programs based on the gender of the transfer recipient show mixed results, but almost no experimental evidence exists of testing gender-differentiated impacts of a single program. Agricultural interventions—specifically home gardening and dairy projects—show mixed impacts on women’s empowerment measures such as time, workload, and control over income; but they demonstrate very little impact on nutrition. Implementation modalities are shown to determine differential impacts in terms of empowerment and nutrition outcomes. With regard to the impact of microfinance on women’s empowerment, evidence is also mixed, although more recent reviews do not find any impact on women’s empowerment. The impact of microfinance on nutritional status is mixed, with no evidence of impact on micronutrient status. Across all three types of programs (cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs), very little evidence exists on pathways of impact, and evidence is often biased toward a particular region. The paper ends with a discussion of the findings and remaining evidence gaps and an outline of recommendations for research.

Author: Sraboni, Esha
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 101

View

Book Description
Using nationally representative survey data from rural Bangladesh, this paper examines the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture and indicators of individual dietary quality. Our findings suggest that women’s empowerment is associated with better dietary quality for individuals within the household, with varying effects across the life course. Women’s empowerment is associated with more diverse diets for children younger than five years, but empowerment measures are not consistently associated with increases in nutrient intake for this age group. Women’s empowerment is positively and significantly associated with adult men’s and women’s dietary diversity and nutrient intakes. Different empowerment domains may have different impacts on nutrition, but other characteristics, such as maternal schooling and household socioeconomic status, may play a more important role for younger children. The importance of maternal education in the dietary quality of young children, and the relatively greater importance of women’s empowerment for older children and adults, imply that policies designed to empower women and improve nutritional status should be informed by knowledge of which specific domains of women’s empowerment matter for particular nutritional outcomes at specific stages of the life course.

Author: Brian Thompson
Publisher: CABI
ISBN: 1780642997
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 455

View

Book Description
Nutrition-sensitive, food-based approaches towards hunger and malnutrition are effective, sustainable and long-term solutions. This book discusses the policy, strategic, methodological, technical and programmatic issues associated with such approaches, proposes “best practices” for the design, targeting, implementation and evaluation of specific nutrition-sensitive, food-based interventions and for improved methodologies for evaluating their efficacy and cost-effectiveness, and provides practical lessons for advancing nutrition-sensitive food-based approaches for improving nutrition at policy and programme level.

Author: Maneka Jayasinghe
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811687439
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 121

View

Book Description
This book investigates the relationships between economies of scale in food consumption and a number of socio-economic and demographic characteristics of households and household behavioural choices since food is the major share of household expenditure for poor households. The characteristics considered comprise household size, location, income, and gender of the head of household while the behavioural choices considered comprise the decision to consume home-grown food and the decision to adopt domestic technology to aid food preparation and consumption. The book proposes two theoretical models to rationalize the role of the consumption of home-grown food and the adoption of domestic technology in enhancing economies of scale in food consumption. Econometric models are also used to empirically test the validity of the two theoretical models while adjusted poverty estimations are derived numerically using the estimated equivalence scales. Although data used in applying these techniques are based on four Household Income and Expenditure Surveys conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) in Sri Lanka, the methodology can be used for similar analysis in relation to any other country.

Author: Sivan Yosef
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44

View

Book Description