Abstract
Aim
This paper aims to assess the prevalence of minimum diet diversity (MDD) and minimum acceptable diet (MAD) among Indian children aged 6–23 months. Additionally, the study seeks to understand the factors that contribute to children meeting the WHO-recommended criteria for MDD and MAD.
Method
We performed a quantitative analysis of food intake of children aged 6–23 months utilizing nationally representative cross-sectional data from the National Family Health Survey (2019–2021). We calculated the percentage of children within this age group who met the criteria for MDD and MAD. Furthermore, we estimated the predictors of MDD and MAD among these children using logistic regression analyses.
Results
We found that children aged 6–23 months in India had a remarkably low prevalence of both MDD and MAD, with rates of 25% and 10.5%, respectively. The likelihood of receiving MAD was significantly reduced for children whose mothers had no education and had low body mass index (BMI). While the household’s wealth status was found to be significantly associated with MDD, no significant association was observed between wealth status and MAD. We also found a significant association between low diet diversity and wasting, and between MAD and no anaemia.
Conclusion
Integrating counselling on IYCF practices into antenatal and postnatal care services should be a priority. Additionally, efforts should be made to increase awareness about the significance of maintaining a diverse and nutritionally balanced diet for children. There should also be a focus on creating awareness about meal frequency for promoting optimal child growth.
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Data availability
The NFHS-5 data is a publicly available data set from the Demographic Health Survey Program portal.
Code availability
The authors are willing to share codes upon request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, India, and the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) Program for allowing us to access the NFHS-5 data set.
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This paper is based on secondary data, and the authors received no funding for this analysis.
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Abdul Jaleel planned, conducted the statistical analysis, and wrote the paper. K. Venkatesh supervised and validated the analysis, and reviewed and edited the paper. C.S. Surya Goud and Sapavat Shankar validated the analysis, and reviewed and edited the paper.
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Jaleel, A., Surya Goud, C.S., Shankar, S. et al. Nourishing the future: exploring the factors influencing minimum diet diversity and minimum acceptable diet among Indian children aged 6–23 months. J Public Health (Berl.) (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-023-02085-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-023-02085-y