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One area within agriculture with tremendous potential to influence early childhood nutrition is the dairy sector. Dairy products have a range of nutritional and physical characteristics that make them an almost ideal complementary food. Undernourished children in poor countries are often deficient in foods rich in high-quality proteins comprised of essential amino acids that constitute the building blocks for linear growth and cognitive development (Semba, 2016). Dairy has a higher digestibility-corrected amino acid score than any other food (1.21) and is particularly efficacious at closing amino acid gaps in the monotonous diets prevalent in Africa and Asia (FAO, 2013), and in poorer populations more exposed to infections (Semba, 2016). Dairy is unique in stimulating plasma insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a growth hormone that acts to increase the uptake of amino acids (FAO, 2013). Dairy is also dense in calories, fat, and various micronutrients (vitamin A and B12), as well as being exceptionally rich in calcium (which contributes to bone length and strength), potassium, magnesium, and phosphorus (Dror and Allen, 2014). Finally, the sheer density of multiple macro- and micronutrients in dairy products—as well as their taste, and familiar texture and consistency—makes them almost ideal for infants and young children with small stomachs incapable of consuming large quantities of nutrient-sparse foods so common in diets of poorer households.
Our study synthesized data from 176 papers after screening and critically reviewing information from 12 electronic databases that produced a total of 34,402 unique references and grey literature sources published between 1991 and the end of 2020. Based on the systematic analysis of the papers, we found that nearly two out of every five (42%) of the papers reviewed showed that livestock production is associated with improved height-for-age Z score (indicator of chronic malnutrition). Our analysis also showed that weight-for-length/height Z score (an indicator of acute malnutrition) improved through livestock production. Similarly, close to a third (30.7%) of the papers reviewed showed that weight-for-age Z scores (a direct indicator of both chronic and acute malnutrition) of children improved through livestock production of families. Livestock production has also showed a positive or neutral relationship with women’s nutritional status in almost all the reported papers. However, close to four-fifths (79.5%) of the papers reporting on infection and morbidity outcomes also indicated that livestock keeping is linked to a wide range of infectious disease outcomes, which are spread primarily through water, food, and insects.
Objective We validated Food Recognition Assistance and Nudging Insights (FRANI), a mobile artificial intelligence (AI) dietary assessment application in adolescent females aged 12–18 y (n = 36) in Ghana, against weighed records (WR), and multipass 24-hour recalls (24HR).
Methods Dietary intake was assessed during 3 nonconsecutive days using FRANI, WRs, and 24HRs. Equivalence of nutrient intake was tested using mixed-effect models adjusted for repeated measures, by comparing ratios (FRANI/WR and 24HR/WR) with equivalence margins at 10%, 15%, and 20% error bounds. Agreement between methods was assessed using the concordance correlation coefficient (CCC).
Results Equivalence for FRANI and WR was determined at the 10% bound for energy intake, 15% for 5 nutrients (iron, zinc, folate, niacin, and vitamin B6), and 20% for protein, calcium, riboflavin, and thiamine intakes. Comparisons between 24HR and WR estimated equivalence at the 20% bound for energy, carbohydrate, fiber, calcium, thiamine, and vitamin A intakes. The CCCs by nutrient between FRANI and WR ranged between 0.30 and 0.68, which was similar for CCC between 24HR and WR (ranging between 0.38 and 0.67). Comparisons of food consumption episodes from FRANI and WR found 31% omission and 16% intrusion errors. Omission and intrusion errors were lower when comparing 24HR with WR (21% and 13%, respectively).
Conclusions FRANI AI–assisted dietary assessment could accurately estimate nutrient intake in adolescent females compared with WR in urban Ghana. FRANI estimates were at least as accurate as those provided through 24HR. Further improvements in food recognition and portion estimation in FRANI could reduce errors and improve overall nutrient intake estimations.
Methodology: The nationally representative General Nutrition Survey of 2009–2010 (n = 8,225 households) was used to derive dietary patterns using principal component analysis (PCA) based on 18 food groups as input variables. Quintiles of the highest adherence (Q5) and lowest adherence (Q1) were generated based on the factor score of each dietary pattern. Nutrient adequacy and dietary diversity scores (DDS) were calculated to measure diet quality, and greenhouse gas emission (GHGE) and blue water use (BWU) were selected as environmental impact indicators.
Results: Using PCA, three distinct dietary patterns were identified: an Omnivorous, Traditional, and Pescatarian pattern. Compared to the Traditional pattern, the Omnivorous and Pescatarian patterns (Q5s) were associated with a higher nutrient adequacy, with mean probability of adequacy of 0.51 in both patterns, compared to 0.45 in the Traditional pattern. However, environmental impacts in terms of GHGE and BWU per 2,000 kcal were considerably higher in the Omnivorous pattern (6.14 kg CO2-eq. and 0.15 m3/kg) compared to all other pattern’s Q5s. The GHGE was lowest in the Traditional pattern (4.18 kg CO2-eq.) and the Pescatarian pattern has the lowest BWU (0.12 m3/kg).
Conclusion: Despite that diet quality was slightly better in all three patterns compared to the average diet of the total population, environmental impact was also higher. Therefore, future research is needed to develop a more optimal diet that considers both diet quality and environmental impact to explore the trade-offs between diet quality and environmental impact.
. 2023
Design: Linear goal programming models were built for three scenarios (non-fasting, continuous fasting and intermittent fasting). Each model minimised a function of deviations from nutrient reference values for eleven nutrients (protein, Ca, Fe, Zn, folate, and the vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, and B12). The energy intake in optimised diets could only deviate 5 % from the current diet.
Settings: Five regions are included in the urban and rural areas of Ethiopia.
Participants: Two non-consecutive 24-h dietary recalls (24HDR) were collected from 494 Ethiopian women of reproductive age from November to December 2019.
Results: Women’s mean energy intake was well above 2000 kcal across all socio-demographic subgroups. Compared to the current diet, the estimated intake of several food groups was considerably higher in the optimised modelled diets, that is, milk and dairy foods (396 v. 30 g/d), nuts and seeds (20 v. 1 g/d) and fruits (200 v. 7 g/d). Except for Ca and vitamin B12 intake in the continuous fasting diet, the proposed diets provide an adequate intake of the targeted micronutrients. The proposed diets had a maximum cost of 120 Ethiopian birrs ($3·5) per d, twice the current diet’s cost.
Conclusion: The modelled diets may be feasible for women of reproductive age as they are close to their current diets and fulfil their energy and nutrient demands. However, the costs may be a barrier to implementation.
The chapter summarises evidence underpinning food system actions to make fruits and vegetables more available, accessible and desirable through push (production and supply), pull (demand and activism) and policy (legislation and governance) mechanisms, with action options at the macro (global and national), meso (institutional, city and community) and micro (household and individual) levels. It also suggests the need to recognise and address power disparities across food systems, and trade-offs among diet, livelihood and environmental food system outcomes.
We conclude that there is still a need to better understand the different ways that food systems can make fruits and vegetables available, affordable, accessible and desirable across places and over time, but also that we know enough to accelerate action in support of fruit- and vegetable-rich food systems that can drive healthy diets for all.
Results A total of 217 E. turcicum isolates were recovered. Most of the isolates (47%) were recovered from the Ikenne samples while the least were obtained from Zaria. All isolates were morphologically characterized. A subset of 124 isolates was analyzed for virulence effector profiles using three primers: SIX13-like, SIX5-like, and Ecp6. Inter- and intra-location variations among isolates was found in sporulation, growth patterns, and presence of the effectors. Candidate effector genes that condition pathogenicity and virulence in E. turcicum were found but not all isolates expressed the three effectors.
Conclusion Morphological and genetic variation among E. turcicum isolates was found within and across locations. The variability observed suggests that breeding for resistance to NCLB in Nigeria requires selection for quantitative resistance to sustain the breeding efforts.
Objectives We examined if greater intensity of supportive supervision as defined by monitoring visits to Anganwadi Centre, CHW-supervisor meetings, and training provided by supervisors to CHWs in the context of Integrated Child Services Development (ICDS), a national nutrition program in India, is associated with higher performance of CHWs. Per program guidelines, we develop the performance of CHWs measure by using an additive score of nutrition services delivered by CHWs. We also tested to see if supportive supervision is indirectly associated with CHW performance through CHW knowledge.
Methods We used longitudinal survey data of CHWs from an impact evaluation of an at-scale technology intervention in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. Since the inception of ICDS, CHWs have received supportive supervision from their supervisors to provide services in the communities they serve. Mixed-effects logistic regression models were used to test if higher intensity supportive supervision was associated with improved CHW performance. The model included district fixed effects and random intercepts for the sectors to which supervisors belong.
Results Among 809 CHWs, the baseline proportion of better performers was 45%. Compared to CHWs who received lower intensity of supportive supervision, CHWs who received greater intensity of supportive supervision had 70% higher odds (AOR 1.70, 95% CI 1.16, 2.49) of better performance after controlling for their baseline performance, CHW characteristics such as age, education, experience, caste, timely payment of salaries, Anganwadi Centre facility index, motivation, and population served in their catchment area. A test of mediation indicated that supportive supervision is associated indirectly with CHW performance through improvement in CHW knowledge.
Conclusion Higher intensity of supportive supervision is associated with improved CHW performance directly and through knowledge of CHWs. Leveraging institutional mechanisms such as supportive supervision could be important in improving service delivery to reach beneficiaries and potentially better infant and young child feeding practices and nutritional outcomes.
We argue that the research agenda should embrace the whole nutritional contribution of the multiple dietary components of cereals towards addressing the triple burden of undernutrition, micronutrient malnutrition, overweight/obesity and non-communicable diseases. Agri-nutrition and development communities need to adopt a multidisciplinary and food systems research approach from farm to metabolism. Agriculture researchers should collaborate with other food systems stakeholders on nutrition-related challenges in cereal production, processing and manufacturing, and food waste and losses. Cereal and food scientists should also collaborate with social scientists to better understand the impacts on diets of the political economy of the food industry, and the diverse factors which influence local and global dietary transitions, consumer behavioural choices, dietary change, and the assessment and acceptance of novel and nutritious cereal-based products.
ကုန်စည်အမျိုးအစားအားလံုးအား လွပ်လပ်စွာ စီးဆင်းခွင့ ်ေပးြခင်း- တည် ငိမ်ေသာ အစားအစာစိုက်ပျိုးထုတ်လုပ် ေရးစနစ်သည် အစားအစာအမျိုးအမည်အစံု (အနည်းလိုအာဟာရများ ကယ်ဝသည့် သစ်သီးဝလံများ၊ ဟင်းသီး ဟင်းရွက်များ၊ တိရစ ာန်များမှရေသာ အစားအစာများ အပါအဝင်) ှင့ ်အတူ မ ှိမြဖစ်လိုအပ်ေသာ စားစရာမဟုတ်သည့်ကုန်စည်များပါ လွပ်လပ်စွာ စီးဆင်းမ ှိေစရန် လိုအပ်ပါသည်။ ြပဿနာများေပါ်ေပါက်လာပါက ၎င်းတိုကိုေြဖ ှင်း ိုင်ရန် အစားအစာေစျးကွက်များ ှင ့ ့ ် တန်ဖိုးကွင်းဆက်များကို ြဖစ် ိုင်သမ နီးကပ်စွာ ေစာင့ ် ကည့်ြခင်း ြမန်မာ ိုင်ငံအတွင်း ှိ အစားအစာေရာင်းချသည့်ေစျးများတွင် သန် ှင်းမ ကိုြမ ့ င့ ်တင်ြခင်းြဖင့ ် COVID-19ပျံ ှံ ိုင်မ အ ရာယ်ကို ့ ေလ ာချ ့ ြခင်း ကုန်စည်စီးဆင်းမ ကို မတားဆီးေစရန် ရဲ၊စစ်တပ် ှင့ ်အြခားေဒသအာဏာပိုင်များသို ှင်းလင်းေသာ န် ကားချက်များ ထု ့ တ်ြပန် ထားြခင်း ြမန်မာအစိုးရသည် ဤ ပ်ေထွးေသာ ကျန်းမာေရး ှင့ ်လူမ စီးပွားေရးအကျပ်အတည်းကာလတေလ ာက် အချိန်တိုင်းတွင် အေြခခံအစားအစာ ှင့ ်အာဟာရဖူလံုမ ကို ထိန်းသိမ်းရမည်ြဖစ်ေ ကာင်း အိ ိယ ှင့ ်အြခားဖွံ ဖိုးဆဲ ိုင်ငံများ၏ အမှားအယွင်းများမှ သင်ခန်းစာရယူသင့ ်ပါသည်။
The implications are clear: we need to take action to mitigate, as much as possible, these predicted negative consequences for nutrition. Now.
Objective Our objective was to measure vitamin A absorption in rats by adapting a plasma isotope ratio method previously used to determine cholesterol absorption.
Methods Male Sprague-Dawley rats [n = 14; 340 ± 16 g (mean ± SD)] received an oral tracer dose of [3H]retinyl acetate in oil plus an intravenous dose of [14C]vitamin A–labeled lymph prepared in a donor rat that had received [14C]retinyl acetate intraduodenally. Blood samples were collected on days 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, and 12, and plasma was analyzed for 3H and 14C; vitamin A absorption was calculated for each sample as (fraction of oral dose/fraction of intravenous dose) × 100. Radioactivity was also measured in feces and urine collected as pools on days 3, 6, 9, and 12 and in liver and remaining carcass on day 12.
Results Vitamin A absorption calculated as the plasma isotope ratio was >100% on day 1, 78% ± 5% on day 6, 76% ± 5% on day 9, and 74% ± 5% on day 12; fitting the data to an exponential function plus a constant predicted an absorption of 75% by day 14. Recovery of the oral dose in feces (day 0 to day 6) was low (6.2% ± 0.84%, n = 10) and the mean isotope ratio in day 9–12 urine pool was lower than that in plasma.
Conclusions The plasma isotope ratio holds promise for estimating vitamin A absorption, but additional work is needed to determine how long studies need to be and if the doses should be administered simultaneously. For application of this method in humans, artificial chylomicrons labeled with a stable isotope of retinyl acetate could be used for the intravenous dose, with a different isotope required for the oral dose.
Through an analysis of 89 studies, identified through a systematic search, on rural areas of low and middle-income countries, we observe three findings. First, women play a key role in agriculture, as reflected in their time commitments. Second, evidence from a very limited set of studies suggests that agricultural interventions tend to increase time commitments in agriculture of the household members for whom impact is measured. Third, while changing time use tends to change nutritional outcomes, it does so in a range of complex ways and there is no agreement on the impact. Nutritional impacts are varied because households and household members respond to increased time burden and workload in different ways.
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