Food Insecurity, Food Based Coping Strategies and Suboptimal Dietary Practices of Adolescents in Jimma Zone Southwest Ethiopia

Abstract

Despite the high prevalence of adolescent food insecurity in Ethiopia, there is no study which documented its association with suboptimal dietary practices. The objective of this study is to determine the association between adolescent food insecurity and dietary practices. We used data on 2084 adolescents in the age group of 13–17 years involved in the first round survey of the five year longitudinal family study in Southwest Ethiopia. Adolescents were selected using residence stratified random sampling methods. Food insecurity was measured using scales validated in developing countries. Dietary practices were measured using dietary diversity score, food variety score and frequency of consuming animal source food. Multivariable regression models were used to compare dietary behaviors by food security status after controlling for socio-demographic and economic covariates.Food insecure adolescents had low dietary diversity score (P<0.001), low mean food variety score (P<0.001) and low frequency of consuming animal source foods (P<0.001). After adjusting for other variables in a multivariable logistic regression model, adolescent food insecurity (P<0.001) and rural residence (P<0.001) were negatively associated with the likelihood of having a diversified diet (P<0.001) and frequency of consuming animal source foods, while a high household income tertile was positively associated. Similarly, multivariable linear regression model showed that adolescent food insecurity was negatively associated with food variety score, while residence in semi-urban areas (P<0.001), in urban areas (P<0.001) and high household income tertile (P = 0.013) were positively associated. Girls were less likely to have diversified diet (P = 0.001) compared with boys.Our findings suggest that food insecurity has negative consequence on optimal dietary intake of adolescents. Food security interventions should look into ways of targeting adolescents to mitigate these dietary consequences and provide alternative strategies to improve dietary quality of adolescents in Southwest Ethiopia.

Household dietary diversity and Animal Source Food consumption in Ethiopia: evidence from the 2011 Welfare Monitoring Survey

“…For majority of households, livestock is an important asset of regular income that the households rely on and be disposed of in hard times to provide a safety net [38]. As reported previously [30] and demonstrated in the current study also, HDDS is positively associated with a higher socio-economic status of the households where by the households are able to purchase variety of foods including ASF to diversify their diet.…”

“…As a result, farmers are selling majority of their products to the urban consumers and many of the products are not accessible at an affordable price to the poor majority in rural areas. Moreover, urban households are believed to be exposed to information about the health benefits of a diversified diet through different media outlets [30]. Afar, Amhara and Somali were the regions where more than 80% of the households were having a low HDDS.…”

“…Despite the lack of established cut-offs in terms of number of food groups to indicate adequate or inadequate dietary diversity for HDDS, higher HDDS is desirable and larger number of food groups are required to meet requirements of various nutrients [29]. Therefore, the score is converted into tertiles and the higher tertile of the score was taken as high HDDS and the middle and low tertiles were merged together as low HDDS [30, 31]. In the high HDDS category households consumed seven and more food groups while in the low HDDS less than seven food groups in the previous 1 week.…”

“…It was hypothesized that male sex of the household head and being literate were positively associated with dietary quality; while illness in any member of the household was believed to negatively affect the dietary diversity [30–33]. The examined household level factors included residence (urban vs. rural), household size (categorized as 4 and less and above 4 based on the average household size), experience of shock (defined as having experienced at least one of the following circumstances in the past 12 months: drought, crop damage, flood, loss of job, robbery, fire accident or land slide), experience of food shortage in the past 12 months, number of crops cultivated (categorized as 3 and less and above 3 crops based on the average number of crops cultivated) and socio-economic score.…”

Ketersediaan dan Keragaman Pangan serta Tingkat Ekonomi sebagai Prediktor Status Gizi Balita (The Availability and Diversification of Food as Well as Economic Status as the Predictor of Nutritional Status of Children Under 5 Years Old)

“…Sedangkan pada beberapa penelitian terkait dengan status gizi balita menggunakan keragaman pangan di tingkat individu (Individual Dietary Diversity Score). Individual dietary diversity score (IDDS) sangat bermanfaat sebagai proxy measure dari kualitas makanan individu [4] dan sebagai refleksi dari kecukupan zat gizi (28)(29)(30). Walaupun keragaman pangan tingkat individu ini juga tidak menjadi preditor status gizi balita di Kenya [31].…”