Nutrition

Scaling biofortified wheat production for agrifood and nutritional security in eastern India: Evidence from five years of multi-location field evaluations in Bihar

Diets, fruit and vegetable intake, and nutritional status in Sri Lanka: A scoping review

Suboptimal diets, including low fruit and vegetable (F&V) intake, are major contributors to malnutrition and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Sri Lanka. Understanding dietary patterns is essential for addressing these challenges. This scoping review synthesizes the literature on diet, F&V intake, and nutritional status across different population groups in Sri Lanka. Searches were conducted in PubMed in October 2023. In total, 30 publications on diet, 13 on F&V intake, and 26 on nutritional status met the inclusion criteria. Sri Lankan diets were found to be rice-dominant with limited variety of nutrient-dense foods such as animal-source foods (ASF) and F&V. Trends in nutritional status varied across life stages. Among children < 5, undernutrition was prevalent, with stunting affecting 14%–21%, wasting 10%–15%, and underweight 17%–21%. Anemia was found in 8%–15% of children < 5 and 25%–30% of pregnant women. Micronutrient deficiencies, particularly vitamin D, iron, and zinc, affected more than one-third of pregnant women. In adults, over one-third were overweight/obese, 8%–12% had diabetes, and 20%–25% had hypertension. Diet, F&V intake and nutrition outcomes also differed by socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic characteristics, with estate sector residents, Indian Tamil populations, and low-income groups disproportionately affected by poor diet quality, low F&V intake, insufficient nutrient intake and malnutrition, while women (vs. men) and urban (vs. rural/estate) residents exhibited higher prevalence of overweight/obesity and NCDs. This review revealed evidence gaps such as the lack of recent dietary intake data based on individual quantitative dietary assessments that limit understanding of current diet adequacy. Additionally, only one impact evaluation designed to improve diet was identified. More research is needed to understand how to effectively improve diet including increasing intake of F&V and ASF in Sri Lanka.

Estimating the number of people eating biofortified foods on-farm and from markets: A detailed methodology and tool

Background Biofortification is a cost-effective and scalable approach to reduce micronutrient deficiencies. Currently there is scant data detailing the number (reach) and proportion (coverage) of individuals consuming biofortified foods, which is a key limitation for policymakers. Objective Develop a method to estimate the reach and coverage of biofortified foods using primary and secondary data sources. Methods We used data from 2023 to estimate the reach and coverage of zinc biofortified rice in Bangladesh and wheat in Pakistan, and vitamin A maize and cassava in Nigeria. Our calculation is divided into 5 phases: 1) seed availability, 2) agricultural production, 3) on-farm consumption, 4) off-farm consumption, and 5) overall national level reach and coverage. Phase 4 includes two consumption scenarios: full replacement and half replacement, where biofortified foods respectively account for 100% or 50% of the per capita consumption. Results In 2023, approximately 13 to 16 million people (8-9% of the population) consumed biofortified rice in Bangladesh. In Pakistan, between 97 to 173 million people consumed biofortified wheat (39-70% of the population). In Nigeria, biofortified maize was consumed by 42 to 66 million people (18-29% of the population) and biofortified cassava by 25 to 38 million people (11-17% of the population). Conclusions Our method estimates on-farm and off-farm reach and the reach/coverage of biofortified foods with visible and invisible traits. Because there is insufficient primary or secondary data describing the intake of biofortified foods, we estimated a range for off-farm reach. We estimate that in 2023, between 177 and 293 million people consumed the four biofortified crops explored in this analysis. This approach can be used to estimate the reach and coverage of other biofortified crops in other countries. More information about the consumption of these foods is needed to improve the accuracy of national reach and coverage estimates.