Feeding habits and nutritional status young children and their mothers in cocoa producing smallholder households of South-West Cote d’Ivoire. A publication presented at the Humid Tropics conference t held on 3-6 March 2015. Ibadan, Nigeria

Côte d’Ivoire is the leading cocoa producer and represents 40% of the world production. Cocoa production plays a major role in the country’s economy contributing to 10% to the GDP and supporting more than six million farming households. The South-West region produces about 40% of the country’s total cocoa production. At the same time, the major cocoa producing areas of Côte d’Ivoire revealed stunting rates of 27.1% and child mortality levels of 114% in 2010. A baseline survey was conducted in 38 villages with 1069 randomly selected cocoa producing smallholder households from February to March 2014 to evaluate food security, fruit and vegetable production and dietary diversity in the South-West region by applying semi-structured questionnaires, 24-hours recalls and food insecurity questionnaires. Women (1069) and their children under 59 months (1475) were also subjected to anthropometric measurements. Dietary diversity of the surveyed population was low with 80% of women and 94% of children consuming less than 3 different food groups the day before the interview. Food groups consumed most frequently by the surveyed women according to the 24-h recall were fats and oils (69.5% of respondents), white roots and tubers (53.2%) and cereals (39.1%), while nutrient-dense foods were consumed by few respondents, e.g. fruit and vegetables (16.4%), fish (10.6%) and vitamin A-rich vegetables, fruits and tubers (5.7%). However, mothers reported a more diverse diet for their children as in addition to cereals and tubers, which were consumed by 41.5 and 38.7% of the children, respectively, also fish and fruit were consumed frequently (32.5 and 24.5%, respectively), while other important food groups were rarely consumed, e.g. vitamin A-rich vegetables, fruits and tubers (14.5%), eggs (11.8%) and meat (10.4%). The low dietary diversity of the surveyed children corresponded with their extremely high stunting rates (related to chronic malnutrition) of 48.7%; and high levels of food insecurity (35%) of the surveyed households. The results of the survey indicate that there is need to diversify the food sources among the cocoa producers and to increase the consumption of nutrient-dense food in order to improve nutritional status and health of cocoa producing smallholder households

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