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Erick Boy

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Erick Boy

Erick Boy is the Chief Nutritionist in the HarvestPlus section of the Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit. As head of nutrition for the HarvestPlus Program since 2008, he has led research that has generated scientific evidence on biofortified staple crops as efficacious and effective interventions to help address iron, vitamin A, and zinc deficiency in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.

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Nutrition, Diets, and Health

Sharvari Patwardhan

Research Analyst

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Bio

Sharvari Patwardhan is a Research Analyst in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit at IFPRI, based in New Delhi. She is a development economist interested in research at the intersection of health, nutrition, and agriculture. Prior to joining IFPRI, Sharvari was a Research Associate in Health Economics and Social Care for the HOPE research group at the University of Manchester. She holds a master’s degree in Development Economics from SOAS, University of London, and a bachelor’s degree in Economics-Statistics from St. Xavier’s College, Autonomous, Mumbai.

Nutrition, Diets, and Health

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Preprint

Perceived constraints to healthy diets: Evidence from agrifood system assessments in rural South Asia

2025Patwardhan, Sharvari; Chakrabarti, Suman; Choo, Esther M.; Boncyk, Morgan; Blake, Christine; Kim, Sunny S.; Scott, Samuel P.
Details

Perceived constraints to healthy diets: Evidence from agrifood system assessments in rural South Asia

The healthfulness of diets in South Asia is limited by socio-economic and public infrastructure challenges. Perceptions about food such as availability, accessibility, desirability, and convenience can impact food choice and ultimately diets. However, there are limited tools to understand consumers’ perceptions of these factors and if perceptions relate to actual food intake. Using a novel tool administered across five rural districts in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, we quantify the association between food perceptions and food intake. A Likert scale (agree, neutral, disagree) was used to capture respondents’ perceptions about seven food choice drivers (affordability, accessibility, desirability, convenience, food quality, food safety, availability) for a list of six common foods. For each food, principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to identify latent “drivers”. The association between these and diets (using 24-hour dietary recall data) was estimated using multivariable regression analysis. There was considerable heterogeneity across countries with respect to the relative importance of food choice drivers and diet quality. There is a need to measure and understand individual food perceptions that drive food choice to help develop policies that promote healthier food choices.

Year published

2025

Authors

Patwardhan, Sharvari; Chakrabarti, Suman; Choo, Esther M.; Boncyk, Morgan; Blake, Christine; Kim, Sunny S.; Scott, Samuel P.

Citation

Patwardhan, Sharvari; Chakrabarti, Suman; Choo, Esther M.; Boncyk, Morgan; Blake, Christine; et al. 2025. Perceived constraints to healthy diets: Evidence from agrifood system assessments in rural South Asia. MedRxiv available January 9, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.06.25320037

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Capacity Building; Rural Areas; Healthy Diets; Agrifood Systems; Surveys

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.06.25320037 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Preprint

Resource thumbnail

Preprint

Intrahousehold dynamics in South Asia: Understanding the relationships between women’s empowerment, task sharing, decision making, and diets among women

2025Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Manohar, Swetha; Banerjee, Archis; Gupta, Shivani; Chauhan, Alka; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Koirala, Uma
Details

Intrahousehold dynamics in South Asia: Understanding the relationships between women’s empowerment, task sharing, decision making, and diets among women

Despite the growing evidence on the role of women in agriculture and nutrition, interlinkages between empowerment among women, gendered task allocation, and nutrition are rarely studied together. Using data from the Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA), a household survey that used a plate-to-farm assessment approach in three countries (Bangladesh, India and Nepal), the paper investigates the associations between empowerment of women, gendered task allocation, decision-making among women, and diets among women. Our findings reveal complex and context-specific differences in associations between task allocation, decision-making and empowerment among. While agency in decision-making among women is positively associated with empowerment in all three country contexts, associations between gendered task allocation and empowerment vary. The share of tasks performed by females, particularly in agriculture and food preparation) is positively associated with empowerment among women, but the proportion of tasks shared equally between males and females does not necessarily empower women. Gendered task allocation and empowerment among women are not significantly associated with diets of women in the three countries, owing to the greater importance of broader socio-economic and context-specific factors such as wealth, education, and regional factors in explaining the variance in dietary outcomes. These findings highlight the need to take a holistic approach that addresses gender norms and household resource constraints to improving empowerment of women, while also addressing local accessibility/availability of nutritious foods to enhance the quality of diets of women.

Year published

2025

Authors

Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Manohar, Swetha; Banerjee, Archis; Gupta, Shivani; Chauhan, Alka; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Koirala, Uma

Citation

Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes; Manohar, Swetha; Banerjee, Archis; Gupta, Shivani; Chauhan, Alka; Patwardhan, Sharvari; and Koirala, Uma. 2025. Intrahousehold dynamics in South Asia: understanding the relationships between women’s empowerment, task sharing, decision making, and diets among women. MedRxiv Preprint. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.08.25320196

Country/Region

Bangladesh; India; Nepal

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Intrahousehold Relations; Decision Making; Women’s Empowerment; Diet; Agriculture; Household Surveys; Gender Norms

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.08.25320196 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Preprint

Resource thumbnail

Preprint

What adults in rural South Asia eat and when they eat it: Evidence from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal

2025Scott, Samuel P.; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Ruel, Marie T.; Chakrabarti, Suman; Neupane, Sumanta; Manohar, Swetha; Moursi, Mourad; Menon, Purnima
Details

What adults in rural South Asia eat and when they eat it: Evidence from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal

Background Poor diets pose a threat to all forms of malnutrition and diet-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Data on dietary patterns are scarce in South Asia. Objectives We sought to describe overall diet quality, intake of foods and food groups, and eating occasions among adults in rural South Asia. Methods Data were from five districts across Bangladesh (n=2,802 individuals), India (n=1,672), and Nepal (n=1,451). The Global Diet Quality Score (GDQS) application was used to measure intake of foods on the previous day, with each food tagged to an eating occasion. Diet quality and the risk of diet-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) were described using GDQS total (0–49), GDQS positive (0–32) and GDQS negative (0–17) metrics for overall, healthy, and unhealthy food intake respectively. Results Diet quality was low, with similar scores across countries for GDQS total (17-19 depending on country), GDQS positive (7–8) and GDQS negative (10–12), indicating low intake of healthy foods as the main contributor to poor diets. Over 90% of adults had levels of GQDS scores associated with moderate/high risk for diet-related NCDs, with the proportion at high risk in Bangladesh being 2-3x higher than other countries. Across sites, intake of refined grains (white rice), sweets (sugar, biscuits), and white tubers (potatoes) was common. One-third of adults did not eat breakfast in Nepal, and snacking was twice as common in males (63%) versus females (33%) in Bangladesh. Conclusions These findings highlight the need to improve diets in rural South Asia and may help inform interventions targeting food intake patterns.

Year published

2025

Authors

Scott, Samuel P.; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Ruel, Marie T.; Chakrabarti, Suman; Neupane, Sumanta; Manohar, Swetha; Moursi, Mourad; Menon, Purnima

Citation

Scott, Samuel P.; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Ruel, Marie T.; Chakrabarti, Suman; Neupane, Sumanta; et al. 2025. What adults in rural South Asia eat and when they eat it: Evidence from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. MedRxiv available January 6, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.06.25320064

Country/Region

Bangladesh; India; Nepal

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Capacity Building; Rural Areas; Feeding Habits; Diet; Health

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.06.25320064 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Preprint