What's new

Intake is working with Harvard University to develop and validate new metrics of diet quality for women of reproductive age for use in low- and middle-income countries. 

For background on the context and motivation for this work, and a review and synthesis of conceptual and operational definitions of diet quality, refer to Intake's technical report, Measuring diet quality among women of reproductive age in low- and middle-income countries: New metrics for changing diets…

UNICEF's State of the World's Children 2019 report focuses on children, food, and nutrition, highlighting the importance of diet quality to children's health, development, and well-being.  The report concludes with an agenda to "put children's nutrition rights first", which includes a recommendation "to collect, analyse and use good-quality data and evidence regularly to guide action and track progress." The report also includes a special section entitled, "Better data, better diets."

FAO and WHO have released Guidelines on Healthy Sustainable Diets, calling for action to "Establish a representative baseline of current diets, when needed conducting individual dietary assessment by age, gender, income, ethnic group, and geography. Use these data to identify which shifts in diet could potentially have the greatest positive impact on both healthy and environment."

The DHS Model Questionnaire - Phase 8 is now available. The new questionnaire will collect data on food group consumption among women 15-49 years, based on self-report for one 24-hour reference period. The data collected will allow for tabulation of the Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W) indicator and will also allow for assessing the proportion of women who report consumption various "healthy" and "unhealthy" food groups, based on one 24-hour reference period.