Potential contribution of cereal and milk based fermented foods to dietary nutrient intake of 1-5 years old children in Central province in Zambia

Abstract

Zambia is still facing undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies despite fortification and supplementation programmes stressing the need for additional solutions. Fermented foods have the potential to improve nutrient intake and, therefore, could have an important role in food based recommendations (FBRs) to ensure adequate intake of nutrients for optimal health of populations. Secondary dietary intake data was used in Optifood, a linear programming software to develop FBRs, for children aged 1-3 and 4-5 years in Mkushi district of Zambia. Three scenarios per age group were modeled to determine FBRs based on: (1) FBRs based on local available foods (2) FBR and Mabisi, a fermented milk beverage, and (3) FBR with Munkoyo, a cereal fermented beverage. The scenarios were compared to assess whether addition of Mabisi or Munkoyo achieved a better nutrient intake. FBRs based on only locally available non-fermented foods did not meet ≥70% of recommended nutrient intake (RNI) for calcium, fat, iron and zinc, so-called problem nutrients. The addition of Munkoyo to the FBRs did not reduce the number of problem nutrients, but after adding Mabisi to the FBR's only iron (67% of RNI) in the 1-3 year age group and only zinc (67% of RNI) in the 4-5 year age group remained problem nutrients. Mabisi, a fermented milk product in combination with the local food pattern is a good additional source of nutrients for these age groups. However, additional nutrition sensitive and cost-effective measures would still be needed to improve nutrient intake, especially that of iron and zinc.

Fig 1. Graphical representation of Optifood analysis.

Each age group was done separately and for each age group three scenarios were done. For each scenario, the three modules were applied to determine the FBRs.

Fig 2. Comparison of problem nutrients for the three scenarios (FBRs with local foods only, FBRs with Munkoyo added and FBRs with Mabisi added) against the worst case scenarios for the two age groups, 1–3 years old in graph (a) and 4–5 years old in graph (b).

Notes: The y-axis shows the % of RNI and the x-axis shows the problem nutrients. RNI is Recommended Nutrient Intake; FBRs is Food Based Recommendations. These are the nutrients that did not reach 70% RNI when diets were modelled for the 3 scenarios compared with the worst-case-scenario. The rest of the nutrients selected and modelled in Optifood are not depicted in this figure because they were all ≥70% RNI for all the scenarios. In the figure, the diet with Mabisi recorded the highest increase compared to the worst-case-scenario for the problem nutrients in both age groups).