Men's nutrition knowledge is important for women's and children's nutrition in Ethiopia

Abstract

In an effort to address undernutrition among women and children in rural areas of low‐income countries, nutrition‐sensitive agriculture (NSA) and behaviour change communication (BCC) projects heavily focus on women as an entry point to effect nutritional outcomes. There is limited evidence on the role of men's contribution in improving household diets. In this Agriculture to Nutrition trial (Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT03152227), we explored associations between men's and women's nutritional knowledge on households', children's and women's dietary diversity. At the midline evaluation conducted in July 2017, FAO's nutrition knowledge questionnaire was administered to male and female partners in 1396 households. There was a high degree of agreement (88%) on knowledge about exclusive breastfeeding between parents; however, only 56–66% of the households had agreement when comparing knowledge of dietary sources of vitamin A or iron. Factor analysis of knowledge dimensions resulted in identifying two domains, namely, ‘dietary’ and ‘vitamin’ knowledge. Dietary knowledge had a larger effect on women's and children's dietary diversities than vitamin knowledge. Men's dietary knowledge had strong positive associations with households' dietary diversity scores (0.24, P value = 0.001), children's dietary diversity (0.19, P value = 0.008) and women's dietary diversity (0.18, P value < 0.001). Distance to markets and men's education levels modified the effects of nutrition knowledge on dietary diversity. While previous NSA and BCC interventions predominantly focused on uptake among women, there is a large gap and strong potential for men’s engagement in improving household nutrition. Interventions that expand the role of men in NSA may synergistically improve household nutrition outcomes.

Complementary Feeding Social and Behavior Change Communication for Fathers and Mothers Improves Children’s Consumption of Fish and Eggs and Minimum Meal Frequency in Kaduna State, Nigeria

“…Previous research has shown that fathers’ and mothers’ nutrition knowledge contributes to adequate complementary feeding practices ( 36 , 42 , 43 ). In this study, despite low reported exposure to some intervention components, we found substantial improvements between baseline and endline in complementary feeding knowledge among both fathers and mothers.…”

Determinants of minimum dietary diversity of lactating mothers in rural northern region of Bangladesh: A community-based cross-sectional study

“…We suggest implementing adequate nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific interventions to promote MDD among lactating women, especially in rural settings. We may suggest implementing programs including improving maternal nutrition knowledge and ‘husband's nutritional knowledge as these were found effective in improving dietary diversity among women of reproductive ages [ 53 , 54 ]. Another intervention, homestead gardening, which has been found to improve dietary diversity and household food security, would be exceptionally effective [ 52 , 55 , 56 ].…”

Only one in four lactating mothers met the minimum dietary diversity score in the pastoral community, Afar region, Ethiopia: a community-based cross-sectional study

“…Lactating mothers having paternal with the level of secondary educational status are more than two times more likely to met their dietary diversity than whose paternals’ do not have a secondary level of education. As the paternal educational status increases their nutritional knowledge might improve ( 26 ) , which can influence maternal feeding knowledge, attitude and practice ( 16 , 27 ) . Even though in the present study maternal education failed at the multivariable logistic regression model to be an important predictor, it has contributed to meeting minimum maternal diet diversity studies revealed from Ethiopian districts ( 14 , 16 ) .…”