The glass of milk half-empty? Dairy development and nutrition in low and middle income countries.

Dairy products have an exceptionally rich nutrient profile and have long been promoted in high income countries to redress child malnutrition. But given all this potential, and the high burden of undernutrition in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), why isn't dairy consumption more actively promoted in the developing world? In this review we focus on a broadly defined concept of "dairy development" to include production, trade, marketing, regulation, and demand stimulation. We address three key questions.

Poverty, price and preference barriers to improving diets in sub-Saharan Africa.

Suboptimal diets are the most important preventable risk factor for the global burden of non-communicable diseases. The EAT- reference diet was therefore developed as a benchmark for gauging divergence from healthy eating standards. However, no previous research has comprehensively explored how and why this divergence exists in poorer countries undergoing nutrition transitions.

Economic shocks predict increases in child wasting prevalence.

In low and middle income countries macroeconomic volatility is common, and severe negative economic shocks can substantially increase poverty and food insecurity. Less well understood are the implications of these contractions for child acute malnutrition (wasting), a major risk factor for under-5 mortality. This study explores the nutritional impacts of economic growth shocks over 1990-2018 by linking wasting outcomes collected for 1.

Stunting and Wasting Among Indian Preschoolers have Moderate but Significant Associations with the Vegetarian Status of their Mothers.

Background: India has high rates of child undernutrition and widespread lactovegetarianism.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to examine how nutrition outcomes varied among Indian preschool children in relation to the vegetarian status of their parents.

Methods: The 2015-2016 National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and the 2011-2012 National Sample Survey (NSS) were used to explore associations between parental vegetarian status and child stunting and wasting at ages 0-59 mo and anemia at ages 6-59 mo.

First foods: Diet quality among infants aged 6-23 months in 42 countries.

Diet quality is closely linked to child growth and development, especially among infants aged 6-23 months who need to complement breastmilk with the gradual introduction of nutrient-rich solid foods. This paper links Demographic and Health Survey data on infant feeding to household and environmental factors for 76,641 children in 42 low- and middle-income countries surveyed in 2006-2013, providing novel stylized facts about diets in early childhood. Multivariate regressions examine the associations of household socioeconomic characteristics and community level indicators of climate and infrastructure with dietary diversity scores (DDS).

The Relative Caloric Prices of Healthy and Unhealthy Foods Differ Systematically across Income Levels and Continents.

Background: Relative prices of healthy/unhealthy foods have been implicated in the obesity epidemic, but never extensively quantified across countries or empirically linked to undernutrition.

Objectives: This study compared relative caloric prices (RCPs) for different food categories across 176 countries and ascertained their associations with dietary indicators and nutrition outcomes.

Methods: We converted prices for 657 standardized food products from the 2011 International Comparison Program into caloric prices using USDA Food Composition tables.

Household dairy production and child growth: Evidence from Bangladesh.

Research from richer countries finds that dairy consumption has strong positive associations with linear growth in children, but surprisingly little evidence exists for developing countries where diets are far less diversified. One exception is a recent economics literature using the notion of incomplete markets to estimate the impacts of cattle ownership on children's milk consumption and growth outcomes in Eastern Africa. In addition to external validity concerns, an obvious internal validity concern is that dairy producers may systematically differ from non-dairy households, particularly in terms of latent wealth or nutritional knowledge.

How Important is Parental Education for Child Nutrition?

Existing evidence on the impacts of parental education on child nutrition is plagued by both internal and external validity concerns. In this paper we try to address these concerns through a novel econometric analysis of 376,992 preschool children from 56 developing countries. We compare a naïve least square model to specifications that include cluster fixed effects and cohort-based educational rankings to reduce biases from omitted variables before gauging sensitivity to sub-samples and exploring potential explanations of education-nutrition linkages.

Understanding the Rapid Reduction of Undernutrition in Nepal, 2001-2011.

South Asia has long been synonymous with unusually high rates of undernutrition. In the past decade, however, Nepal has arguably achieved the fastest recorded decline in child stunting in the world and has done so in the midst of civil war and post-conflict political instability. Given recent interest in reducing undernutrition-particularly the role of nutrition-sensitive policies-this paper aims to quantitatively understand this surprising success story by analyzing the 2001, 2006, and 2011 rounds of Nepal's Demographic Health Surveys.