You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 6, Issue Suppl 1
  • 2 Addressing nutritional gaps and suggesting a practical framework to reduce the risk of malnutrition and improve nutrition security in santhal tribal communities in India

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

8th International Summit on Nutrition and Health (2022) – Abstracts
Food systems
2 Addressing nutritional gaps and suggesting a practical framework to reduce the risk of malnutrition and improve nutrition security in santhal tribal communities in India
  1. Sarah Armes1,
  2. Sally Ayyad1,
  3. Xunhan Li1,
  4. Wanja Nyaga1,
  5. Sanchita Banerjee1,
  6. Arundhita Bhanjdeo2,
  7. Luke Buckner1,
  8. Debashis Chakraborty1,
  9. Shuvojit Chakraborty2,
  10. Harmanpreet Kaur1,
  11. Asim Manna1,
  12. Ayesha Pattnaik2,
  13. Nivedita Narain4,
  14. Nitya Rao3 and
  15. Sumantra Ray1,5,6
  1. 1NNEdPro Global Institute for Food, Nutrition and Health, Cambridge, UK
  2. 2Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN), New Delhi, India
  3. 3School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
  4. 4Charities Aid Foundation, India
  5. 5School of Biomedical Sciences, Ulster University at Coleraine, Coleraine, UK
  6. 6School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
  7. *Joint first authorship
  8. **Joint second authorship
  9. ***Joint corresponding authors

Abstract

Background The double burden of malnutrition is a growing problem, which is disproportionately represented across the Indian population, with undernutrition dominating rural areas. This study aimed to identify nutritional gaps in traditional recipes of Santhal tribes, create a recipe book to address deficiencies and support diet diversity.

Methods Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQ) were conducted to analyse dietary patterns of Santhal communities. Recipes were collected from five villages and shortlisted into 37 dishes based on availability, acceptability and popularity. Commonly consumed templates were based on FFQ findings and individual dishes. Nutritics software was used to identify nutritional gaps. In total, 24 recommended templates, were created to satisfy adequate intake of nutrients. Mann-Whitney and unpaired t-test were performed and findings were presented as mean (standard deviation(SD)) and median (25th–75th percentile).

Results Less than one-fifth of consumed templates met energy requirements, 27% met protein recommendations, and 4% met requirements for fibre, total fat, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat. Other nutrients of concern included vitamins B12, B9, iodine, calcium and iron. Recommended templates significantly increased energy (Consumed (C): 996.0kcal(930-1090); Recommended (R): 1183.0kcal(1094-1341); p<0.0001), protein (C: 25.0g(8.4); R: 40.5g(33.2-52.3); p<0.0001), total fat (C: 7.4g(6.1-8.8); R: 17.2g(14.1-22.9); p<0.0001) and fibre (C: 5.0g(4.0-6.5); R: 8.2g(5.8-11.7); p=0.0013) compared to consumed templates. Additionally, calcium (C: 108.5mg(36.0-302.5); R: 245.5mg(152.3-528.3); p=0.0121), iron (C: 5.3mg(2.1-8.2); R: 10.7mg(8.2-13.2); p=0.0002), vitamin B6 (C: 0.4mg(0.3-0.7); R: 1.1mg(0.6-1.6); p=0.0001), B9 (C: 54.5ug(36.3-172.8); R: 252ug(179.4); p=0.0026) and B12 (C: 0ug(0-0); R: 1.0ug(0-2.1); p=0.0001) were also significantly increased.

Conclusion This study provides a novel insight on the nutritional adequacy of indigenous Santhal recipes and highlights the need to enhance the nutrition status of these communities. Concerted efforts should be made to increase communication for nutritional advocacy, both nationally and internationally. Future research should evaluate the acceptability, practicality, and uptake of this recipe book in addressing malnutrition in rural communities.

Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge and thank the INDIVIDUALS, particularly Sucheta Mitra, ORGANISATIONS (UEA, PRADAN, NNEdPro, Bhavishya Shakti) and FUNDING (GRTA) who generously shared their time and resources for the purposes of this project.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjnph-2023-nnedprosummit2022.5

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.