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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

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Emily Schmidt

Emily Schmidt is a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. Her most recent research explores household livelihood strategies in Papua New Guinea, including linkages between agriculture, poverty, and nutrition outcomes among rural smallholder farmers.

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Nutrition, Diets, and Health

Swetha Manohar

Research Fellow

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Bio

Swetha Manohar is a Research Fellow and a nutritional epidemiologist whose research has broadly focused on multisectoral programming and policy to improve nutrition and food security in low-income settings, primarily in South and Southeast Asia. This focus has engaged three thematic areas of study: (1) examining linkages between nutrition and agriculture and broader food systems, (2) metrics and methods to examine child growth, food environments, social protection and nutrition coverage, and (3) consideration of broader equity issues in research practice and toward efforts to improve nutrition and enabling healthy sustainable diets for all. Swetha previously served as faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, primarily based in Nepal and then, at the School for Advanced International Studies.

Swetha holds a PhD and MSPH from the Johns Hopkins University and is a registered dietitian.

Google Scholar Citations

Publications

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Preprint

Intrahousehold dynamics in South Asia: Understanding the relationships between women’s empowerment, task sharing, decision making, and diets among women

2025Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes; Manohar, Swetha; Banerjee, Archis; Gupta, Shivani; Chauhan, Alka; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Koirala, Uma
Details

Intrahousehold dynamics in South Asia: Understanding the relationships between women’s empowerment, task sharing, decision making, and diets among women

Despite the growing evidence on the role of women in agriculture and nutrition, interlinkages between empowerment among women, gendered task allocation, and nutrition are rarely studied together. Using data from the Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA), a household survey that used a plate-to-farm assessment approach in three countries (Bangladesh, India and Nepal), the paper investigates the associations between empowerment of women, gendered task allocation, decision-making among women, and diets among women. Our findings reveal complex and context-specific differences in associations between task allocation, decision-making and empowerment among. While agency in decision-making among women is positively associated with empowerment in all three country contexts, associations between gendered task allocation and empowerment vary. The share of tasks performed by females, particularly in agriculture and food preparation) is positively associated with empowerment among women, but the proportion of tasks shared equally between males and females does not necessarily empower women. Gendered task allocation and empowerment among women are not significantly associated with diets of women in the three countries, owing to the greater importance of broader socio-economic and context-specific factors such as wealth, education, and regional factors in explaining the variance in dietary outcomes. These findings highlight the need to take a holistic approach that addresses gender norms and household resource constraints to improving empowerment of women, while also addressing local accessibility/availability of nutritious foods to enhance the quality of diets of women.

Year published

2025

Authors

Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes; Manohar, Swetha; Banerjee, Archis; Gupta, Shivani; Chauhan, Alka; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Koirala, Uma

Citation

Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes; Manohar, Swetha; Banerjee, Archis; Gupta, Shivani; Chauhan, Alka; Patwardhan, Sharvari; and Koirala, Uma. 2025. Intrahousehold dynamics in South Asia: understanding the relationships between women’s empowerment, task sharing, decision making, and diets among women. MedRxiv Preprint. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.08.25320196

Country/Region

Bangladesh; India; Nepal

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Intrahousehold Relations; Decision Making; Women’s Empowerment; Diet; Agriculture; Household Surveys; Gender Norms

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.08.25320196 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Preprint

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Preprint

What adults in rural South Asia eat and when they eat it: Evidence from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal

2025Scott, Samuel P.; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Ruel, Marie T.; Chakrabarti, Suman; Neupane, Sumanta; Manohar, Swetha; Moursi, Mourad; Menon, Purnima
Details

What adults in rural South Asia eat and when they eat it: Evidence from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal

Background Poor diets pose a threat to all forms of malnutrition and diet-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Data on dietary patterns are scarce in South Asia. Objectives We sought to describe overall diet quality, intake of foods and food groups, and eating occasions among adults in rural South Asia. Methods Data were from five districts across Bangladesh (n=2,802 individuals), India (n=1,672), and Nepal (n=1,451). The Global Diet Quality Score (GDQS) application was used to measure intake of foods on the previous day, with each food tagged to an eating occasion. Diet quality and the risk of diet-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) were described using GDQS total (0–49), GDQS positive (0–32) and GDQS negative (0–17) metrics for overall, healthy, and unhealthy food intake respectively. Results Diet quality was low, with similar scores across countries for GDQS total (17-19 depending on country), GDQS positive (7–8) and GDQS negative (10–12), indicating low intake of healthy foods as the main contributor to poor diets. Over 90% of adults had levels of GQDS scores associated with moderate/high risk for diet-related NCDs, with the proportion at high risk in Bangladesh being 2-3x higher than other countries. Across sites, intake of refined grains (white rice), sweets (sugar, biscuits), and white tubers (potatoes) was common. One-third of adults did not eat breakfast in Nepal, and snacking was twice as common in males (63%) versus females (33%) in Bangladesh. Conclusions These findings highlight the need to improve diets in rural South Asia and may help inform interventions targeting food intake patterns.

Year published

2025

Authors

Scott, Samuel P.; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Ruel, Marie T.; Chakrabarti, Suman; Neupane, Sumanta; Manohar, Swetha; Moursi, Mourad; Menon, Purnima

Citation

Scott, Samuel P.; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Ruel, Marie T.; Chakrabarti, Suman; Neupane, Sumanta; et al. 2025. What adults in rural South Asia eat and when they eat it: Evidence from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. MedRxiv available January 6, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.06.25320064

Country/Region

Bangladesh; India; Nepal

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Capacity Building; Rural Areas; Feeding Habits; Diet; Health

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.06.25320064 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Preprint

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Journal Article

Nutrient-dense foods and diverse diets are important for ensuring adequate nutrition across the life course

2024Beal, Ty; Manohar, Swetha; Miachon, Lais; Fanzo, Jessica
Details

Nutrient-dense foods and diverse diets are important for ensuring adequate nutrition across the life course

The world faces a global challenge of how to meet the nutritional needs of a diverse global population through diets. This paper defines the relative nutritional needs across each stage of the life cycle to support human health and identifies who is nutritionally vulnerable. Findings in this paper suggest that there are biological nutritional vulnerabilities stemming from high micronutrient needs per calorie in certain phases of the life cycle, particularly for infants and young children, women of reproductive age, pregnant and lactating women, and older adults, particularly older women. The paper demonstrates the role of micronutrient-dense animal-source foods and plant-source foods important in meeting essential nutrient needs to support healthy growth, development, and aging across vulnerable stages of the life cycle.

Year published

2024

Authors

Beal, Ty; Manohar, Swetha; Miachon, Lais; Fanzo, Jessica

Citation

Beal, Ty; Manohar, Swetha; Miachon, Lais; and Fanzo, Jessica. 2024. Nutrient-dense foods and diverse diets are important for ensuring adequate nutrition across the life course. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 121(50). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2319007121

Keywords

Nutrition; Diet; Health; Life Cycle; Trace Elements; Gender

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2319007121 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Blogs

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia 2024 Conference: Connecting the dots across systems
IFPRI Blog
 | 
February 04, 2025

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia 2024 Conference: Connecting the dots across systems

By Julie Ghostlaw, Esha Sarswat, Shreya Chakraborty, Neha Kumar, Swetha Manohar, and Samuel Scott

Exploring the interconnectedness of food systems.

Events

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia: Connecting the Dots Across Systems
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

December 3 to 5, 2024

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia: Connecting the Dots Across Systems

South Asia grapples with escalating levels of malnutrition in various forms, including undernutrition, overweight and obesity, and micronutrient deficiencies, alongside increasing incidence of diet-related non-communicable diseases. Malnutrition results from a complex interplay of factors incorporating household and individual decision-making, agriculture and food systems, healthcare services, education, and socio-ecological systems that determine access to services and […]