Assessing Diet Quality Where Families Share Their Meals: Evidence from Malawi

BACKGROUND

Where families eat together from a common dish, the shared meal must be nutrient dense enough in each nutrient to meet the needs of the highest-need member.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to develop an aggregate household nutrient requirement benchmark that satisfies all members' needs in a context in which meals are shared and to illustrate how that metric could inform food and nutrition policy making.

METHODS

We merged nationally representative survey data for Malawi in 2010, 2013, and 2016-2017 with individual nutrient requirements and local food composition data to compute the adequacy of each household's aggregate consumption given its demographic composition and primary occupation. To meet each person's nutrient needs at any level of energy balance, the nutrient density of their shared diet needs to be within boundaries of the most restrictive member. We classified the adequacy of each household's diet using these energy-adjusted densities and examined differences by sociodemographic characteristics.

RESULTS

Accounting for meal sharing and nutrient density needs of the highest-need member, virtually all households' food consumption is insufficiently nutrient dense in riboflavin, selenium, lipids, and vitamin B-12, and most consumption is insufficiently nutrient dense in zinc and phosphorus as well. Meeting needs of women, adolescent girls, and young children using shared diets would on average require 145% more iron, 98% more zinc, and approximately 70% more phosphorus and vitamin C than if their needs were met with individualized diets.

CONCLUSIONS

Establishing shared nutrient requirements is feasible using existing survey data and can help set sufficiency criteria in settings in which families share meals. In Malawi, current diets and food composition are inadequate for many nutrients, especially in households with more women and adolescent girls. The results call for concerted investment to increase access to and use of more nutrient-dense foods.

Viewpoint: The future of work in agri-food

As countries develop, agriculture's role as domestic employer declines. But the broader agri-food system also expands, and the scope for agriculture-related job creation shifts beyond the farm. Historically, technological revolutions have shaped, and have been shaped by, these dynamics. Today, a digital revolution is taking hold. In this process of structural transformation, societies evolve from having a surplus to a shortage of domestic farm labor, typically met by foreign agricultural wage workers. Yet anti-immigration sentiments are flying high in migrant-destination countries, and agricultural trade may be similarly challenged. Robots in the fields and packing plants offer an alternative to a diminishing labor supply. COVID-19 will reinforce trends of digitization and anti-globalization (including in food trade), while slowing economic growth and structural transformation. In the world's poorest countries, particularly in Africa, labor productivity in agriculture remains at historically low levels. So, what role can the agri-food system play as a source of employment in the future? This viewpoint elaborates on these trends and reviews several policy options, including inclusive value chain development, better immigration policies, social insurance schemes, and ramp up in agricultural education and extension.

The Cost of Nutritious Diets for Individuals and Households in Rural Malawi

Objectives

The affordability of healthy diets is a key concern for policymakers and an active area of research. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study to examine the cost of nutritionally adequate diets for all population age and sex subgroups at subnational disaggregation over a 10-year monthly time series as well as to extend the least-cost diet framework from individuals to household units who consume shared meals.

Methods

We use household survey panel data matched with local food composition data, human nutrient requirements (EARs, ULs and AMDRs), and monthly market food prices. The food price data include a standardized list of 51 items comprising those foods accounting for the vast majority of household food spending, covering all food groups. Household data are from the Integrated Household Panel Survey (IHPS) 3-round panel (2010–2017). Using linear programming, we identify the combination of available foods and quantities that meet the specified nutrient requirements at the lowest total cost.

Results

Local markets can supply an adequate diet most of the time for some groups but much less often for breastfeeding women and young children, and not at al for children 6–36 months. Where possible, we find that the least-cost individual diet costs 32% of current per capita food spending. For whole households, the local market can meet aggregate nutrient needs 30% of the time. Where possible, it costs 1.8 times household food spending or all total expenditure. Food group analysis reveals households spend more on cereals, meat and roots/tubers, compared to the least-cost adequate diet, but may be under-spending on legumes, milk, fats, and vitamin A-rich fruits.

Conclusions

Finding a healthy diet in Malawi's local markets is not always possible for all types of individuals or families of varying composition. Children 6–36 months require immediate attention, including increasing access to complete complementary foods. Guiding households to make smart shifts in their food spending could improve diet quality but is insufficient alone given that adequate shared meals are unaffordable for most families. Year-round access to nutritious, affordable diets will require an increase in availability and lower cost of nutrient-dense foods and economic growth to raise incomes.

Funding Sources

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CANDASA project.

Food price seasonality in Africa: Measurement and extent

Everyone knows about seasonality. But what exactly do we know? This study systematically measures seasonal price gaps at 193 markets for 13 food commodities in seven African countries. It shows that the commonly used dummy variable or moving average deviation methods to estimate the seasonal gap can yield substantial upward bias. This can be partially circumvented using trigonometric and sawtooth models, which are more parsimonious. Among staple crops, seasonality is highest for maize (33 percent on average) and lowest for rice (16½ percent). This is two and a half to three times larger than in the international reference markets. Seasonality varies substantially across market places but maize is the only crop in which there are important systematic country effects. Malawi, where maize is the main staple, emerges as exhibiting the most acute seasonal differences. Reaching the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger requires renewed policy attention to seasonality in food prices and consumption.

Agriculture in Africa - Telling myths from facts: A synthesis

Stylized facts drive research agendas and policy debates. Yet robust stylized facts are hard to come by, and when available, often outdated. The 12 papers in this Special Issue revisit conventional wisdom on African agriculture and its farmers' livelihoods using nationally representative surveys from the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture Initiative in six African countries. At times they simply confirm our common understanding of the topic. But they also throw up a number of surprises, redirecting policy debates while fine-tuning others. Overall, the project calls for more attention to checking and updating our common wisdom. This requires nationally representative data, and sufficient incentives among researchers and policymakers alike. Without well-grounded stylized facts, they can easily be profoundly misguided.

How much of the labor in African agriculture is provided by women?

The contribution of women to labor in African agriculture is regularly quoted in the range of 60-80%. Using individual, plot-level labor input data from nationally representative household surveys across six Sub-Saharan African countries, this study estimates the average female labor share in crop production at 40%. It is slightly above 50% in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda, and substantially lower in Nigeria (37%), Ethiopia (29%), and Niger (24%). There are no systematic differences across crops and activities, but female labor shares tend to be higher in households where women own a larger share of the land and when they are more educated. Controlling for the gender and knowledge profile of the respondents does not meaningfully change the predicted female labor shares. The findings question prevailing assertions regarding substantial gains in aggregate crop output as a result of increasing female agricultural productivity.