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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2021 Jan;17(1):e13062.
doi: 10.1111/mcn.13062. Epub 2020 Aug 4.

Men's nutrition knowledge is important for women's and children's nutrition in Ethiopia

Ramya Ambikapathi  1   2 , Simone Passarelli  3 , Isabel Madzorera  3 , Chelsey R Canavan  4 , Ramadhani A Noor  3 , Semira Abdelmenan  5 , Dagmawit Tewahido  5 , Amare Worku Tadesse  5 , Lindiwe Sibanda  6 , Simbarashe Sibanda  6 , Bertha Munthali  6 , Tshilidzi Madzivhandila  6 , Yemane Berhane  5 , Wafaie Fawzi  3   4   7 , Nilupa S Gunaratna  2
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Men's nutrition knowledge is important for women's and children's nutrition in Ethiopia

Ramya Ambikapathi et al. Matern Child Nutr. 2021 Jan.

Abstract

In an effort to address undernutrition among women and children in rural areas of low-income countries, nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) and behaviour change communication (BCC) projects heavily focus on women as an entry point to effect nutritional outcomes. There is limited evidence on the role of men's contribution in improving household diets. In this Agriculture to Nutrition trial (Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT03152227), we explored associations between men's and women's nutritional knowledge on households', children's and women's dietary diversity. At the midline evaluation conducted in July 2017, FAO's nutrition knowledge questionnaire was administered to male and female partners in 1396 households. There was a high degree of agreement (88%) on knowledge about exclusive breastfeeding between parents; however, only 56-66% of the households had agreement when comparing knowledge of dietary sources of vitamin A or iron. Factor analysis of knowledge dimensions resulted in identifying two domains, namely, 'dietary' and 'vitamin' knowledge. Dietary knowledge had a larger effect on women's and children's dietary diversities than vitamin knowledge. Men's dietary knowledge had strong positive associations with households' dietary diversity scores (0.24, P value = 0.001), children's dietary diversity (0.19, P value = 0.008) and women's dietary diversity (0.18, P value < 0.001). Distance to markets and men's education levels modified the effects of nutrition knowledge on dietary diversity. While previous NSA and BCC interventions predominantly focused on uptake among women, there is a large gap and strong potential for men's engagement in improving household nutrition. Interventions that expand the role of men in NSA may synergistically improve household nutrition outcomes.

Keywords: Ethiopia; dietary diversity; men's nutrition knowledge; nutrition-sensitive agriculture; women's nutrition knowledge.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Hypothesized pathways from nutrition knowledge to nutrition outcomes
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Panels examining the relationship between men's and women's nutrition knowledge and (a) women's, (b) children's, and (c) households' dietary diversity, and (d) Spearman's correlation matrix of nutrition knowledge variables. Grey shading in (a)–(c) indicates standard error of the loess curves. Grey region on each of the loess curves indicates the standard error
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Results from mixed effects logistic regression of consuming individual food groups among women. All models adjusted for household size, household wealth quintile, women's woman's age, man's age, woman's education, man's education, region and kebele‐level clustering (treatment effect was not significant). DGV: dark green vegetables; Vitamin A: vitamin A rich produce (including both vegetables and fruits that are rich sources of vitamin A)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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