Pregnant Women Dietary Diversity and its Associated Factors with Special Focus to Food Environment in Kilteawlaelo District, Tigray Region, Northern Ethiopia: mixed cross sectional study

Women diet diversity is a proxy indicator of micronutrient adequacy. Low diet diversity affects the health of pregnant women and their offspring. Despite of its significant influence on nutrition, food environment has been considered to a lesser extent in international research and advocacy. But now a days influencing the food environment and making it nutrition sensitive is an emerging strategy to address nutritional challenges. Therefore this study aimed to assess diet diversity and associated factors with special focus to food environment among pregnant women. Mixed cross-sectional study design was employed. A total of 423 randomly selected pregnant women were included in the study. Seven focus group discussions and seven in-depth interviews were also conducted. 48.2% of the pregnant women achieved the minimum women diet diversity score. Low food availability, being a farmer or housewife, and having less than two market days per week in the nearby market were significantly associated with low diet diversity. The qualitative part found that foods were not sufficiently available at home, not affordable in the market, and the local informal market was not easilly accessible. Grains, fruits, and animal source foods were perceived to be very expensive. Vegetables were relatively cheap; however, pregnant women said they could not eat vegetables alone without grains. Grains are the main staple foods, which were neither available at home nor affordable in the market. So the local agricultural office should work on increasing and diversifying agricultural production giving more focus to grains, encouraging home gardening and small

Author(s): Shewit Engdashet

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