International Dietary Data Expansion Project (INDDEX)

The International Dietary Data Expansion Project (INDDEX), is a collaborative effort between the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and other international experts. The INDDEX team aims to facilitate countries’ increased acquisition and use of high-quality, timely food and nutrient consumption data, which is needed to create more effective evidence-based decisions about agriculture, food, and nutrition policies and programs.

Learn more on the INDDEX website.

Project duration: 2015 – 2019

Contact

Carlo Azzarri

Donors and funders

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Project partners

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Tufts University Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy

Publications

Journal Article

Analyzing the drivers of household dietary diversity: Evidence from Burkina Faso

2021Bandyopadhyay, Arkadeep; Haile, Beliyou; Azzarri, Carlo; Somé, Jérôme

Details

Analyzing the drivers of household dietary diversity: Evidence from Burkina Faso

Background: The diets of millions of poor individuals lack adequate amount of essential nutrients. Objective: To examine the determinants of household dietary diversity in Burkina Faso and assess whether the choice of a diversity metric matters. Methods: Using survey data from 2014, we construct 3 metrics—Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS), Berry Index (BI), and Healthy Food Diversity Index (HFDI). Unlike the oft-used HDDS, the BI captures the quantity distribution of food items while the HFDI captures all 3 aspects of a healthy diet—count, quantity distribution, and health value. We fit linear (for BI and HFDI) and Poisson (for HDDS) models controlling for several socioeconomic and climatic covariates. Results: Some parameter estimates are sensitive to the diversity metric with fewer significant covariates observed in the HFDI model. Overall, diets are more diverse for households in urban areas, with female or better educated heads, with higher asset-based wealth and with more diverse on-farm production, while remoteness reduces dietary diversity. Higher precipitation seems to reduce diversity, potentially driven by the spatial heterogeneity in precipitation and on-farm production diversity. Conclusions: The sensitivity of estimates to the metric used underscores potentially more complex interactions that determine the quantity distribution of food items consumed. Policies that enhance on-farm production diversity, market access, and women’s empowerment may help improve dietary diversity and subsequent nutritional benefits. Efforts should be made to compile health value data that are relevant to developing countries facing nutrition transition.

Year published

2021

Authors

Bandyopadhyay, Arkadeep; Haile, Beliyou; Azzarri, Carlo; Somé, Jérôme

Citation

Bandyopadhyay, Arkadeep; Haile, Beliyou; Azzarri, Carlo; and Somé, Jérôme. 2021. Analyzing the drivers of household dietary diversity: Evidence from Burkina Faso. Food and Nutrition Bulletin 42(4): 530-550. https://doi.org/10.1177/03795721211029092

Country/Region

Burkina Faso

Keywords

Western Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Africa; Production; Households; Capacity Development; Measurement; Nutrients; Nutrition; Poverty; Diversification; Diet; Dietary Diversity

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1177/03795721211029092 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

How can we better capture food away from home? Lessons from India’s linking person-level meal and household-level food data

2017Fiedler, John L.; Yadav, Suryakant

Details

How can we better capture food away from home? Lessons from India’s linking person-level meal and household-level food data

Despite acknowledged shortcomings, household consumption and expenditure surveys (HCES) are increasingly being used to proxy food consumption because they are relatively more available and affordable than surveys using more precise dietary assessment methods. One of the most common, significant sources of HCES measurement error is their under-estimation of food away from home (FAFH). In 2011, India’s National Survey Sample Organization introduced revisions in its HCES questionnaire that included replacing “cooked meals”—the single item in the food consumption module designed to capture FAFH at the household level—with five more detailed and explicitly FAFH sub-categories. The survey also contained a section with seven, household member-specific questions about meal patterns during the reference period and included three sources of meals away from home (MAFH) that overlapped three of the new FAFH categories. By providing a conceptual framework with which to organize and consider each household member’s meal pattern throughout the reference period, and breaking down the recalling (or estimating) process into household member-specific responses, we assume the MAFH approach makes the key respondent’s task less memory- and arithmetically-demanding, and thus more accurate than the FAFH household level approach. We use the MAFH estimates as a reference point, and approximate one portion of FAFH measurement error as the differences in MAFH and FAFH estimates. The MAFH estimates reveal marked heterogeneity in intra-household meal patterns, reflecting the complexity of the HCES’s key informant task of reporting household level data, and underscoring its importance as a source of measurement error. We find the household level-based estimates of FAFH increase from just 60.4% of the individual-based estimates in the round prior to the questionnaire modifications to 96.7% after the changes. We conclude that the MFAH-FAFH linked approach substantially reduced FAFH measurement error in India. The approach has wider applicability in global efforts to improve HCES.

Year published

2017

Authors

Fiedler, John L.; Yadav, Suryakant

Citation

Fiedler, John L.; and Yadav, Suryakant. 2017. How can we better capture food away from home? Lessons from India’s linking person-level meal and household-level food data. Food Policy 72(October 2017): 81-93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2017.08.015

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Household Surveys; Dietary Assessment; Malnutrition; Nutrition; Food Security; Survey Design; Diet

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2017.08.015 Source record

Project

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health

Record type

Journal Article

Working Paper

Exploring extensions of the Subramanian–Deaton cost per calorie approach: Imputing nutrient intake from foods prepared and consumed away from home and other composite foods

2017Mwangi, Dena M.; Fiedler, John L.; Sununtnasuk, Celeste

Details

Exploring extensions of the Subramanian–Deaton cost per calorie approach: Imputing nutrient intake from foods prepared and consumed away from home and other composite foods

This paper assesses the Subramanian and Deaton (S–D) approach for imputing the caloric intake of households from food prepared away from home (FAFH) and composite foods (CF) by juxtaposing it with the imputations of alternative approaches, and extends these approaches to four additional nutrients—vitamin A, iron, zinc, and calcium. The apparent relative nutritional insignificance of FAFH and CF in Bangladesh obfuscates our efforts to assess alternatives to the S–D approach to imputation, and we remain uncertain about the relative value of the alternative imputation approaches examined. FAFH and CF—although widely consumed in Bangladesh—constitute a relatively unimportant source of nutrients, regardless of how the nutrient content of FAFH and CF is imputed.

Year published

2017

Authors

Mwangi, Dena M.; Fiedler, John L.; Sununtnasuk, Celeste

Citation

Mwangi, Dena M.; Fiedler, John L.; and Sununtnasuk, Celeste. 2017. Imputing nutrient intake from foods prepared and consumed away from home and other composite foods: Exploring extensions of the Subramanian–Deaton cost per calorie approach. IFPRI Discussion Paper 1596. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Calcium; Household Consumption and Expenditure Surveys; Surveys; Nutrition Policies; Dietary Assessment; Households; Nutrient Intake; Retinol; Nutrition; Trace Elements; Food Consumption; Iron; Diet; Zinc

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Working Paper

Donors

Team members

Project Leader
Team Members

Carlo Azzarri

Senior Research Fellow, Innovation
Policy and Scaling

What we do

What we do

Research topics

Projects and impact

Modeling tools

What’s new

Where we work

IFPRI Regional Programs

IFPRI Country Programs

Research by country and region

International Dietary Data Expansion Project (INDDEX)