article · Agriculture & Food Security
Analysis of the 2016 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey shows that 85.1 percent of children aged 6 to 23 months in Ethiopia receive inadequate minimum dietary diversity, defined as consuming fewer than four of seven recommended food groups. Diets are heavily dominated by dairy products, grains, roots, and tubers, as mothers predominantly provide easily accessible foods rather than diverse alternatives. Significant predictors of whether children achieve minimum dietary diversity include household wealth, the educational level of the father, and the frequency of listening to the radio or reading newspapers and magazines. Among the breastfed children who did achieve adequate diversity, the majority were aged 6 to 11 months. Substantial improvements in complementary feeding practices are needed to support Sustainable Development Goals, with guidance pointing toward developing and delivering infant and young child feeding messages via mass media.
Inadequate feeding practices drive childhood malnutrition and create persistent barriers to poverty reduction and sustainable socioeconomic development. Understanding that parental education, wealth, and mass media exposure dictate dietary variety enables health authorities and development partners to design targeted nutrition initiatives and use broadcast channels to promote essential complementary feeding practices.
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Inadequate feeding practices are a significant reason for the onset of malnutrition in young children, and their consequences are one of the major obstacles to sustainable socioeconomic development and poverty reduction. Dietary diversity is one of the useful indicators to assess the nutrient adequacy and can examine how different food groups contribute to the nutrient adequacy of the diet in a specific area. Minimum dietary diversity is the intake of at least four food types from the seven categories. Secondary data analysis of Ethiopian Demographic health survey of 2016 was conducted to explore significant predictors that make children inappropriate to meet minimum dietary diversity. There were 2972 weighted samples, and we have used “SVY” command by STATA 14.0 during data analysis to run the complex survey data. This study has identified the possible factors of inadequate minimum dietary diversity of children. The proportion of inadequate minimum dietary diversity in Ethiopia was found 85.1%. Frequency of reading newspaper or magazine, frequency of listening to radio, father’s educational level and household wealth index were found significant predictors to determine the minimum dietary diversity of children. Dairy products and grain, roots and tubers account more than half of consumed foods. Among breastfed children who attained minimum dietary diversity, majority of them were in the age group of 6–11 months. Minimum dietary diversity is still low in Ethiopia, and most of mothers feed their child the most and easy accessible food rather than of diverse food. In the way of addressing the Sustainable Development Goal, Ethiopia requires substantial improvement in complementary feeding practices. Appropriate infant and young child feeding messages should to be developed and delivered through mass media.
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DOI: 10.1186/s40066-018-0219-8
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