Dietary habits of mothers with children 6-23 months in rural areas of Kitui County, Kenya

Women and children are considered as part of the vulnerable groups in the society, and as such a lot of effort has been put to improve their nutrition status. The well-being and nutrition statuses of children and women are linked (Castro et al., 2015). Dietary intake is one of the factors that determine the child and maternal nutritional status (UNICEF, 1990). In many different countries in the world, women’s diet consists of limited fruits and vegetables and animal source foods such as meat, dairy and milk (UNICEF, n.d.). Food choices of women are influenced by factors that could either be intrinsic or extrinsic in nature (Turner et al., 2018). Globally, the diets of women are influenced by numerous factors that include access to food, affordability and socio-cultural factors that affect their ability to decide on matters related to their nutrition and care (UNICEF, n.d.)
Kitui County is one of the 29 counties in Kenya categorized as arid and semi-arid lands in the country. It has also been classified as one of the thirteen (13) counties categorized as high risk for starvation in 2023. It has an aridity of 30-84% as classified by the State Directorate for Development of the ASALS. The level of food self-sufficiency in the county is 51%; however, 10% of the entire population is absolutely food insecure. Nutrition status of the population in the county remains poor. This was highly attributed to the frequent droughts experienced resulting to food insecurity (Kitui County Integrated plan 2018-2022, 2018).
Similar to the national trend, there are more females than males in Kitui County. The total population is 1,136,187 with 51.7% been females and 48.3% are males. Over a third (47.4%) of the females in the county are in the reproductive age bracket (15-49 years) (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2019).
Although a lot of effort has been put in establishing the dietary practices of women, majority of the studies put their focus on pregnant and lactating women, leaving out a big proportion of women of reproductive age (WRA). This study sought to fill this gap by focusing on women of reproductive age who have children aged 6-23 months. A newly developed tool for assessing diet quality, Dietary Quality Questionnaire (DQQ), was used in collecting data. DQQ is a tool that comprises of twenty-nine food groups that are inclusive of both healthy and unhealthy foods. In this study, the data collected was later used to calculate six (6) diet quality indicators; food group diversity score (FGDS), MDD-W, All-5, NCD-Protect score, NCD-Risk Score and Global Dietary Recommendation (GDR) whose data is reported in this paper.