Assessing the Diets of Young Children and Adolescents in India: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Sustainably addressing the crisis of undernutrition for children and adolescents in underserved and resource-limited communities will require, among other investments, interventions aimed at optimizing the diets of these vulnerable populations. However, to date, there are substantial global gaps in the collection of dietary data in children and adolescents. This review article summarizes the challenges and opportunities in assessing diet among children and adolescents in India. National surveys in India identify the scale of the triple burden of malnutrition (undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and overnutrition) in children and adolescents and assess key nutrition and food security indicators for making informed policy decisions. However, national surveys do not collect data on diet, instead relying on anthropometry, biomarkers of micronutrient deficiencies, and summary measures of diet, such as the WHO infant and young child feeding summary indicators. Sub-national surveys and the scientific literature thus fill important gaps in describing the nutrient intakes of children and adolescents in India; however large gaps remain. Future research can be improved by investments in infrastructure to streamline the assessment of diet in India. The current challenges confronting the collection and analysis of high-quality dietary data occur in both the data collection and data analysis phases. Common methods for assessing diets in low-resource settings—such as 24 h recalls and food frequency questionnaires are particularly challenging to implement well in young children and adolescents due to motivation and memory issues in young respondents. Additionally, there are challenges with parental recall including children having multiple caretakers and meals outside the home. Furthermore, analysis of dietary data is hindered by the lack of affordable, accessible software for dietary data analysis relevant to the diversity in Indian diets. New technologies can address some of the challenges in dietary data collection and analysis, but to date, there are no platforms designed for population-level dietary assessment in India. Public and private sector investment in dietary assessment, as well as collaboration of researchers and the creation of open-source platforms for the sharing of data inputs (local food lists, recipe databases, etc.) will be essential to build infrastructure to better understand the diets of children and adolescents in India and improve dietary interventions in these target groups.

Development of mobile phone-based dietary data collection applications in pregnant women and infants for the M-SAKHI trial

“…This will foster collaboration, information sharing and regular updating regional food recipes in India. ( 30 ) The ACEC, FFQ, and IDR Apps developed in this study are important tools to achieve this goal.…”

Characteristics of Global Data on Adolescent’s Dietary Intake: A Systematic Scoping Review

“…In addition, a considerable share of available data could not be disaggregated by gender [ 11 ]. Furthermore, the overall quality of available data and underlying studies was often deemed low because of limited scale and sampling methods and a lack of standard measures to assess high-quality dietary data in adolescents particularly in LMICs [ 4 , 5 , 13 , 14 ]. Another limitation is that data were usually of non-nationally representative nature [ 11 , 14 ].…”

“…Furthermore, the overall quality of available data and underlying studies was often deemed low because of limited scale and sampling methods and a lack of standard measures to assess high-quality dietary data in adolescents particularly in LMICs [ 4 , 5 , 13 , 14 ]. Another limitation is that data were usually of non-nationally representative nature [ 11 , 14 ]. A review by Newens and Walton [ 15 ] collated dietary data on sugar intakes of different population subgroups only found 14 countries—all from Europe, North America and Australasia—for which nationally representative dietary data on sugar intakes for adolescents were available.…”

Ameliorating Forage Crop Resilience in Dry Steppe Zone Using Millet Growth Dynamics

“…The grains of pearl millet are gluten-free and have a low glycemic index due to their high fiber content. The provitamin-A-enriched grains are also a rich source of fat (5-7 g/100 g) [16]. Pearl millet grain is encased in a tough fibrous seed that contains a variable amount of inhibitory plant compounds like phytic acid and polyphenols.…”