Food and Non-Food Factors in Nutrition Planning (Colombia).

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide nutrition planners with a simple methodology able to distinguish the relative weight of food and non-food factors as determinants of malnutrition at community level. Malnutrition was once thought to be only the consequence of inadequate or imbalanced food intake. In recent years it has been realized that malnutrition in children may occur in the presence of adequate food resources due to non-food factors such as disease and social-psychological aspects of nurturing. These are not entirely medical matter. Where public policy toward malnutrition, that is, nutrition planning, is the concern, nutritional status of families and communities provide information on which policy decision may be based. Severe malnutrition must be treated on an individual level as a medical matter. Less severe malnourishment may be addressed at family and community level by directing resources to reduce effects of major contributing factors be they food or non-food variables, for example food stamps or supplementary feeding programs influence food intake whereas improved sanitation or water source improvement influences non-food factors. In this work the functional relationship between nutritional status, expressed as bodily growth of preschool children, and caloric intake, expressed as percentage of family requirements, while controlling for the level of infection measured at community level is investigated. The hypothesis provides a measure to indicate whether or not non-food factors are strong factors in the nutritional status of a community. Data taken from a nutrition survey of depressed rural communities in Colombia do not contradict this hypothesis. In particular they seem not to contradict the corollary that when the overall socioeconomic conditions of the environment improve, adequate nutrient intake then becomes a sufficient condition for optimum nutritional status.