Neglected indigenous fruit trees have an important role in providing vital minerals and micronutrients to growing children, as well as the wider community. The diversity of indigenous fruit trees also means they have an important role to play in addressing seasonality and hunger periods facing many rural communities by ensuring the availability of nutritious fruits for a healthy diet year-round. This chapter will highlight the diversity of indigenous fruit trees and their food composition and contribution to micronutrient and wider dietary needs. It will also highlight the ‘portfolio approach’ – for addressing seasonal and nutrient specific gaps in local diets. School gardens offer an important entry point for the integration and promotion of indigenous fruit trees for nutrition education and promotion of healthy diets. Schools also offer a platform for wider community engagement by promoting practical learning and engagement not only of pupils through such programmes as 4K clubs but also community and parent learning through SMCs and champion farmers.
Tag: children
Investigating market-based opportunities for the provision of nutritious and safe diets to prevent childhood stunting: a UKRI-GCRF action against stunting hub protocol paper
Background: Inadequate access to affordable, safe, desirable and convenient nutrient-dense food is one of the underlying causes of child stunting. While targeted nutrition-sensitive interventions (eg, backyard ‘nutri-gardens’) may increase dietary diversity within farming households, such interventions have limited scalability across the wider food system where markets remain underdeveloped. This research aims to develop and assess market-based interventions for key nutrient-dense foods to help improve the diets of women and children in the first 1000 days of life. Methods: Data collection uses four parallel approaches in each of the three study countries (India, Indonesia and Senegal). (1) A novel food environment tool will be developed to characterise the accessibility and affordability of nutrient-dense foods in the study countries. The tool will be validated through pretesting using cognitive interviewing and piloting in purposively sampled households, 10 (cognitive interviewing) and 30 (piloting) households in each country; (2) stakeholder interviews (eg, with producers, intermediaries and retailers) will be conducted to map out nutrition-sensitive entry points of key value chains (eg, animal-sourced foods), before hotspots of potential food safety hazards will be identified from food samples collected along the chains; (3) the Optifood and Agrifood tools will be used to identify foods that can address food system nutrient gaps and engage key stakeholders to prioritise market interventions to improve nutrition outcomes. Optifood and Agrifood parameters will be informed by publicly available data, plus interviews and focus groups with value chain stakeholders; (4) informed by the previous three approaches and a campaign of participatory ‘group model building’, a novel system dynamics model will evaluate the impact of alternative market-based solutions on the availability and affordability of nutrient-dense foods over time. The study has received ethical approval in the United Kingdom, Senegal, Indonesia and India. Dissemination comprises peer-reviewed journals, international disciplinary conferences and multistakeholder dissemination workshops.
Malnutrition rates in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been amongst the highest in the world for the last few decades and do not appear to be improving. Tshopo Province located in eastern DRC is rich in natural resources including forests and two of the country’s largest rivers the Congo and Tshopo Rivers. Despite these resources, evidence suggests that people living in the province experience food insecurity and malnutrition. The most recent survey shows that 41.8% of children under five in the province suffer from chronic malnutrition (stunting), 6.5% experience acute malnutrition (wasting) and 23.1% are underweight for their age (NIS 2019). These figures are close to the national averages for DRC.
Malnutrition rates in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been amongst the highest in the world for the last few decades and do not appear to be improving. Tshopo Province located in eastern DRC is rich in natural resources including forests and two of the country’s largest rivers the Congo and Tshopo Rivers. Despite these resources, evidence suggests that people living in the province experience food insecurity and malnutrition. The most recent survey shows that 41.8% of children under five in the province suffer from chronic malnutrition (stunting), 6.5% experience acute malnutrition (wasting) and 23.1% are underweight for their age (NIS 2019). These figures are close to the national averages for DRC.
Malnutrition rates in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been amongst the highest in the world for the last few decades and do not appear to be improving. Tshopo Province located in eastern DRC is rich in natural resources including forests and two of the country’s largest rivers the Congo and Tshopo Rivers. Despite these resources, evidence suggests that people living in the province experience food insecurity and malnutrition. The most recent survey shows that 41.8% of children under five in the province suffer from chronic malnutrition (stunting), 6.5% experience acute malnutrition (wasting) and 23.1% are underweight for their age (NIS 2019). These figures are close to the national averages for DRC.
Malnutrition rates in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been amongst the highest in the world for the last few decades and do not appear to be improving. Tshopo Province located in eastern DRC is rich in natural resources including forests and two of the country’s largest rivers the Congo and Tshopo Rivers. Despite these resources, evidence suggests that people living in the province experience food insecurity and malnutrition. The most recent survey shows that 41.8% of children under five in the province suffer from chronic malnutrition (stunting), 6.5% experience acute malnutrition (wasting) and 23.1% are underweight for their age (NIS 2019). These figures are close to the national averages for DRC.
Malnutrition rates in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been amongst the highest in the world for the last few decades and do not appear to be improving. Tshopo Province located in eastern DRC is rich in natural resources including forests and two of the country’s largest rivers the Congo and Tshopo Rivers. Despite these resources, evidence suggests that people living in the province experience food insecurity and malnutrition. The most recent survey shows that 41.8% of children under five in the province suffer from chronic malnutrition (stunting), 6.5% experience acute malnutrition (wasting) and 23.1% are underweight for their age (NIS 2019). These figures are close to the national averages for DRC.
Malnutrition rates in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been amongst the highest in the world for the last few decades and do not appear to be improving. Tshopo Province located in eastern DRC is rich in natural resources including forests and two of the country’s largest rivers the Congo and Tshopo Rivers. Despite these resources, evidence suggests that people living in the province experience food insecurity and malnutrition. The most recent survey shows that 41.8% of children under five in the province suffer from chronic malnutrition (stunting), 6.5% experience acute malnutrition (wasting) and 23.1% are underweight for their age (NIS 2019). These figures are close to the national averages for DRC.