IDENTIFYING DIETARY STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE NUTRIENT ADEQUACY AMONG ETHIOPIAN INFANTS AND YOUNG CHILDREN USING LINEAR MODELLING

Background and objectives: Optimal Infant and Young Child Feeding practices are crucial for child survival but lack guidance from local food-based dietary guidelines, that incorporate fortified products, to ensure nutrient adequacy in Ethiopia. Methods: Based on data from the Ethiopian National Food Consumption Survey, linear programming (LP, Optifood) was used to identify nutrients lacking in local diets of young children (6-8, 9-11 and 12-23 months) and to formulate realistic Food Based Dietary Recommendations (FBDR) for improved nutrient adequacy in four regions by comparing alternative approaches of local complementary foods, micronutrient powders (MNPs), Small quantity Lipid based Nutrient Supplement (Sq-LNS) and combinations of these. Results: Optimised local diets provided inadequate zinc in all regions and age groups, inadequate iron for infants < 1 year of age in all regions, and inadequate calcium, niacin, thiamin, folate, vitamin B12 and B6 in some regions and age-groups, but not in all. The set of regional FBDRs were significantly different for the four regions thus development of one general national FBDRs will be a challenge. Promoting a more diverse diet such as increasing vegetables, legumes and animal source food consumption improves nutrient profile of the diet to a certain extent. Nevertheless even after the FBDRs; some nutrient intakes remain suboptimal. Conclusions: The best nutritional option to solve the nutrient gaps identified is a combination of regional FBDRs with MNP supplementation. It is important to emphasize that MNP should not replace the feeding recommendations, but should be promoted in addition to these FBDRs together with breast-feeding on demand during the first two years of age.