Reshaping Chinese Agrifood Systems to Enhance Human Nutrition: A Scoping Review of Research.

Food security in China has broadened to include achieving balanced nutrition and health while addressing resource and environmental burdens, mitigating climate change, improving livelihoods, and promoting social equity and welfare. This review aimed to explore how China has established the link among agriculture, nutrition, and multiple goals through a system approach over the past decade. A scoping review method was used to analyze the recent research trajectory in China, with a specific focus on research on agrifood systems and improved human nutrition in China from 2014 to 2023.

Air pollutions affect restaurant and foodservice industry in China.

This study examines the impact of air pollution on food away from home (FAFH) consumption in 52 cities across 20 provinces of China, focusing on expenditures for online food delivery (online FAFH) and dine-in restaurants (offline FAFH). Using unique daily aggregated city-level consumption data linked with hourly air quality data, we employ both semiparametric and parametric models to uncover a positive relationship between PM2.5 levels and online FAFH, contrasted by a significantly negative relationship with offline FAFH.

Food Avoidance Taboos During Breastfeeding Are Widespread and Associated With Large Declines in Maternal Dietary Diversity in Myanmar.

Background: Maternal food avoidance practices during pregnancy and breastfeeding have been documented in several Asian countries, but their prevalence and impacts on dietary diversity are not well quantified.

Objectives: This study: 1) assessed the prevalence of beliefs around maternal food avoidance during breastfeeding in Myanmar; 2) explored the correlates of women's food avoidance beliefs as well as mother's stated rationales for avoiding specific foods; and 3) assessed how minimum dietary diversity of women (MDD-W) pertaining to mothers changed from pregnancy to postpartum/breastfeeding.

Methods: We added a novel nutrition module to a nationally representative survey (N = 12,353) in Myanmar to estimate the prevalence of beliefs around maternal food avoidance during breastfeeding and resurveyed a subsample of mothers (N = 155) to understand avoidance of specific foods.

Estimating the cost and affordability of healthy diets: How much do methods matter?

Recently developed cost and affordability of healthy diet (CoAHD) metrics have quickly become mainstream food security indicators. However, published research on the sensitivity of estimation methods is limited. This paper focuses on two important innovations in CoAHD measurement at the global level.

Feed handling practices, aflatoxin awareness and children's milk consumption in the Sidama region of southern Ethiopia.

Consumption of milk is linked to improved nutrient intake and reduced risk of child malnutrition in low and middle-income countries. However, these benefits are contingent on the safety and quality of the milk. Milk consumption may alleviate the widespread risk of malnutrition in rural Ethiopia, but milk-borne contaminants may also compromise child health.

Food prices and the wages of the poor: A cost-effective addition to high-frequency food security monitoring.

The affordability of nutritious food for "all people, at all times" is a critically important dimension of food security. Yet surprisingly, timely high-frequency indicators of food affordability are rarely collected in any systematic fashion despite price volatility emerging as major source of food insecurity in the 21st Century. The 2008 global food crisis prompted international agencies to invest heavily in monitoring domestic food prices in low and middle income countries (LMICs).

Study protocol to assess aflatoxin M1 health risks versus benefits of dairy consumption in Ethiopian children: an epidemiological trial and risk-benefit analysis.

Introduction: In Sidama, Ethiopia, animal-source foods can be difficult to access. Milk has important nutrients for child growth, but carries the risk of aflatoxin M (AFM) contamination. AFM is a metabolite of the mycotoxin aflatoxin B (AFB) in dairy feed; cows secrete AFM in milk when their feed contains AFB produced by fungi in maize, nuts and oilseeds.

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.

Can phone surveys be representative in low- and middle-income countries? An application to Myanmar.

For decades, in-person data collection has been the standard modality for nationally and sub-nationally representative socio-economic survey data in low- and middle-income countries. As the COVID-19 pandemic rendered in-person surveys impossible and unethical, the urgent need for rapid monitoring necessitated researchers and statistical agencies to turn to phone surveys. However, apart from pandemic-related factors, a variety of other reasons can render large segments of a population inaccessible for in-person surveys, including political instability, climatic shocks, and remoteness.

Food inflation and child undernutrition in low and middle income countries.

The 21 Century has been marked by increased volatility in food prices, with global price spikes in 2007-08, 2010-11, and again in 2021-22. The impact of food inflation on the risk of child undernutrition is not well understood, however. This study explores the potential impacts of food inflation on wasting and stunting among 1.

Higher food prices can reduce poverty and stimulate growth in food production.

Food prices spiked sharply in 2007-2008, in 2010-2011 and again in 2021-2022. However, the impacts of these spikes on poverty remain controversial; while food is a large expense for the poor, many poor people also earn income from producing or marketing food, and higher prices should incentivize greater food production. Short-run simulation models assume away production and wage adjustments, and probably underestimate food production by the poor.

Growth in milk consumption and reductions in child stunting: Historical evidence from cross-country panel data.

Agricultural and food policies are increasingly being tasked with doing more to improve the nutritional status of low-income populations, especially reductions in child stunting. Which specific food sectors warrant additional policy attention is less clear, although a growing body of research argues that increased animal-sourced food consumption in general, and increased dairy consumption specifically, can significantly reduce the risks of stunting, as well as deficiencies in micronutrients and high quality protein. However, experimental research on dairy's impacts on child growth in developing countries is very limited, and non-experimental evidence is confined to cross-sectional surveys.

Effects of an integrated poultry value chain, nutrition, gender and WASH intervention (SELEVER) on hygiene and child morbidity and anthropometry in Burkina Faso: A secondary outcome analysis of a cluster randomised trial.

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture programmes have the potential to improve child nutrition outcomes, but livestock intensification may pose risks related to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) conditions. We assessed the impact of SELEVER, a nutrition- and gender-sensitive poultry intervention, with and without added WASH focus, on hygiene practices, morbidity and anthropometric indices of nutrition in children aged 2-4 years in Burkina Faso. A 3-year cluster randomised controlled trial was implemented in 120 villages in 60 communes (districts) supported by the SELEVER project.

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.

A Prepandemic Nutrition-Sensitive Social Protection Program Has Sustained Benefits for Food Security and Diet Diversity in Myanmar during a Severe Economic Crisis.

Background: One-third of preschool children in Myanmar were stunted in 2015-2016, and three-quarters of children 6-23 mo had inadequate diet diversity. In response, a large-scale nutrition-sensitive social protection program was implemented over 2016-2019. In 2020, however, Myanmar's economy was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and harder still by a military takeover in 2021.

Stories of change in nutrition: lessons from a new generation of studies from Africa, Asia and Europe.

How does nutrition improve? We need to understand better what drives both positive and negative change in different contexts, and what more can be done to reduce malnutrition. Since 2015, the Stories of Change in Nutrition studies have analysed and documented experiences in many different African and Asian countries, to foster empirically-grounded experiential learning across contexts. This article provides an overview of findings from 14 studies undertaken in nine countries in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe between 2017 and 2021.

Understanding drivers of stunting reduction in Nigeria from 2003 to 2018: a regression analysis.

Unlabelled: Nigeria is a high burden country for stunting. Stunting reduction has been slow and characterized by unequal progress across the 36 states and federal capital territory of the country. This study aimed to assess the changes in prevalence of stunting and growth determinants from 2003 to 2018, identify factors that predicted the change in stunting, and project future stunting prevalence if these predicted determinants improve.

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.

Poverty and food insecurity during COVID-19: Phone-survey evidence from rural and urban Myanmar in 2020.

Myanmar first experienced the COVID-19 crisis as a relatively brief economic shock in early 2020, before the economy was later engulfed by a prolonged surge in COVID-19 cases from September 2020 onwards. To analyze poverty and food security in Myanmar during 2020 we surveyed over 2000 households per month from June-December in urban Yangon and the rural dry zone. By June, households had suffered dramatic increases in poverty, but even steeper increases accompanied the rise in COVID-19 cases from September onwards.

The COVID-19 crisis will exacerbate maternal and child undernutrition and child mortality in low- and middle-income countries.

The economic crisis and food and health system disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic threaten to exacerbate undernutrition in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We developed pessimistic, moderate and optimistic scenarios for 2020-2022 and used three modelling tools (MIRAGRODEP, the Lives Saved Tool and Optima Nutrition) to estimate the impacts of pandemic-induced disruptions on child stunting, wasting and mortality, maternal anaemia and children born to women with a low body mass index (BMI) in 118 LMICs. We estimated the cost of six nutrition interventions to mitigate excess stunting and child mortality due to the pandemic and to maximize alive and non-stunted children, and used the human capital approach to estimate future productivity losses.

COVID-19 pandemic leads to greater depth of unaffordability of healthy and nutrient-adequate diets in low- and middle-income countries.

Unaffordability of healthy diets affected 3 billion people before the COVID-19 pandemic, 2.5 billion of whom lived in 63 low- and middle-income countries. In these 63 countries, income losses due to the pandemic have markedly worsened the affordability gap.

Cost and affordability of nutritious diets at retail prices: Evidence from 177 countries.

Many policies and programs aim to bring nutritious diets within reach of the poor. This paper uses retail prices and nutrient composition for 671 foods and beverages to compute the daily cost of essential nutrients required for an active and healthy life in 177 countries around the world. We compare this minimum cost of nutrient adequacy with the subsistence cost of dietary energy and per-capita spending on all goods and services, to identify stylized facts about how diet cost and affordability relate to economic development and nutrition outcomes.