Nelly Djuazon

Energy and macronutrient intake among women of reproductive age: Baseline findings from the FRESH End-to-End Evaluation

In Tanzania, unhealthy diets are a major contributor to non-communicable diseases such as obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. Tanzanian diets are generally cereal-based and low in fruit and vegetables (F&V) and animal sourced foods. With rising incomes, consumption of energy-dense processed and ultra-processed foods has increased, reaching 694 kg/year per adult in 2019. Among women of reproductive age (WRA), daily energy intake is also increasing. Although nationally representative data are lacking, individual studies indicate an increase over time from 1,347 kcal/day in 2014 to 1,631 kcal/day in 2015/16 and 2,174 kcal/day in 2022. The CGIAR Research Initiative on Fruit and Vegetables for Sustainable Healthy Diets (FRESH), now under the CGIAR Science Program on Better Diets and Nutrition (BDN), uses an end-to-end approach, described in more detail in Research Brief 1, that combines demand, food environment, and supply interventions to increase desirability, affordability, accessibility, and availability of F&V. In Tanzania, an ongoing impact evaluation is testing the effectiveness of this end-to-end approach in improving F&V intake and vegetable production across 33 villages in the Arusha and Kilimanjaro regions. In this research brief, we describe baseline findings on the energy and macronutrient intake among WRA in the study area.