Dietary Diversity Research Paper

Dietary diversity, defined as the number of diverse foods or food groups consumed over a given reference period. Dietary diversity has long been acknowledged by nutritionists as a key component of high-quality diets. Increasing the variety of foods across and within food groups is recommended by most dietary guidelines internationally because it is thought to certify adequate intake of essential nutrients, and thus promote good health. In fact studies from both developing and developed countries give evidence of a strong positive association between diet diversity and nutrient adequacy (Ruel, 2002).
Dietary diversity defined as a quantitative number of food groups is used extensively as a method for ascertaining variety and nutrient adequacy …show more content…
There are three basic indicators of diet quality of a population or household. These indicators are dietary diversity, percentage of food energy from staples, and quantity of food consumed daily per capita or per adult equivalent. Therefore, dietary diversity is one of the three basic indicators of diet quality of household. Dietary diversity reflects how varied the foods typically consumed by a household are (Smith and Subandoro, …show more content…
Kennedy et al. (2011) defines termdietary diversity as the sum of the number of different food consumed by an individual over a specified time period.
According to WFP (1996) food security definition and concept held different dimensions. These dimensions are namely food availability, food access, food utilization and food stability. Each dimension has its own features. For instance, food availability can be described as the extent to which food is within reach of households (for example in local shops and markets), both in terms of sufficient quantity and quality (FAO,