Nutrition knowledge and practices, and consumption of vitamin A--rich plants by rural Nepali participants and nonparticipants in a kitchen-garden program.
Food-based nutrition interventions, including kitchen gardens and nutrition education, offer a potentially sustainable approach to reducing multiple nutritional deficiencies, but they have been poorly evaluated in developing countries. In a poor region of the terai (the flat, subtropical agricultural region that borders on India) in rural Nepal, we developed and evaluated the impact of a nutrition program added to the Market Access for Rural Development (MARD) Project. The primary objective of the MARD Project was to augment household income by increasing the production of high-economic-value crops. The objective of the nutrition program was to increase vitamin A and iron intakes by promoting kitchen gardens (training, technical assistance, and seed distribution) and nutrition education. One-third of the kitchen-garden program participants also attended nutrition education or agricultural training sessions that were part of the MARD Project. The program was evaluated after 36 months by a cross-sectional nutrition survey in 430 MARD households with kitchen gardens and 389 non-MARD control households. The lack of knowledge about nutrition, including the causes, prevention, and treatment of night-blindness and anemia, was remarkable. However, compared with control households, the kitchen-gardens group had significantly more nutrition knowledge (38% vs. 13% knew one of the causes of night-blindness, and 17% vs. 3% knew one of the causes of anemia), were more likely to feed special complementary foods to infants and to preserve food, and consumed more of 16 types of home-produced micronutrient-rich vegetables and fruits. Although the cross-sectional nature of the study limits our ability to attribute these differences to the program, we observed a striking lack of nutrition knowledge in these communities, and a clear opportunity to increase the intake of vitamin A through home production of vitamin A-rich plants.
Jones
Katharine M
KM
Program in International Nutrition, Department of Nutrition, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA.
Specio
Sheila E
SE
Shrestha
Parvati
P
Brown
Kenneth H
KH
Allen
Lindsay H
LH
D000328:Adult; D000383:Agriculture; D018798:Anemia, Iron-Deficiency / Q000517:prevention & control; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005511:Food Handling / Q000379:methods; D005638:Fruit / Q000737:chemistry; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D019266:Iron, Dietary / Q000008:administration & dosage; D009390:Nepal; D009749:Nutrition Surveys; D052756:Nutritional Sciences / Q000193:education*; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D011203:Poverty; D012423:Rural Health; D014675:Vegetables / Q000737:chemistry; D014801:Vitamin A / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D014802:Vitamin A Deficiency / Q000517:prevention & control
D019266:Iron, Dietary; D014801:Vitamin A