Intrahousehold Preferential Food Distribution Sample Clauses

Intrahousehold Preferential Food Distribution. The primary determinants of child nutritional status are child’s dietary intake and disease. The underlying factors include household food security, nutritional status of the mothers, childcare and other surrounding environmental factors[48]. In areas where the girl child is valued less than the boy child, gender inequality is a contributing factor to undernutrition since the boy child receives preference during food distribution[49, 50]. However, the energy and protein requirement intake for children 5 years and below is the same for both boys and girls [51]. In a study conducted in Eastern Kenya, girls had a higher prevalence of moderate (-2 S.D.) and severe (-3 S.D.) malnutrition compared to boys[50]. In a similar study conducted in India, more girls were underweight, stunted and wasted, respectively when compared to boys (5.9%, 51.4%, and 42.3% girls vs. 46.6%, 40.5% and 35.3% boys)[49]. In both cases, the differences were attributed to the variation of dietary intake while controlling for infectious diseases[49, 50]. Preferential food distribution is defined as favoritism in food distribution to certain household members through increased food quantity, improved food quality and other forms of preferences not affecting diet such as serving priority[51]. Several countries across the world practice preferential food distribution but most of the studies are in South Asia[52-56]. There are several patterns to preferential food distribution which include individual characteristics of the household members (i.e. sex, age, birth order), economic approaches (i.e. contribution to household income), and cultural perceptions of ideal body type (i.e. fat or thin body size)[51, 57- 60]. The theoretical framework on household food distribution includes four components ordered in levels. The first tier is food selection which includes who selects the foods available in the community market and the selection process. The second tier is food preparation which includes who cooks the food in the household and the preparation process[61-65]. The third tier is food serving which includes the identity of the food server, the serving order for individuals in the household, the server of the food, and distribution of food quantity and quality among household members [61-65]. The fourth tier is food allocation patterns which include the dynamics in the household based on the status of an individual in the household and transitory states like pregnancy or illness. [61-65]. It ...