Assessment of household dietary diversity and its associated factors among the households of Amritsar district: a descriptive cross-sectional study

Background: Dietary diversity (DD) refers to the range of foods consumed over a specific period, ensuring adequate nutrient intake for optimal health and development. It’s a critical component of a healthy diet and is widely recognized as such. Dietary diversity is a qualitative measure of food consumption, which indicates household access to a variety of foods and is proxy for nutrient adequacy of the individual's diet. It is described as the number of different food or food groups consumed over a given reference period. Methods: This cross-sectional study was done in rural areas and urban slums of district Amritsar. A 24-hour recall evaluated the HDDS amongst 300 households equally distributed in rural and urban areas. HDDS consisted of 12 food groups which were marked 0 or 1 depending upon the consumption of various food items in the past 24 hours and the total score was calculated. Data was compiled and analyzed using Epi Info, CDC USA. For nominal, categorical and ordinal data, frequencies and proportions were calculated. For continuous data, mean±standard deviation, median (IQR) were calculated whichever relevant depending upon the distribution of data. Results: Mean household dietary diversity score in rural areas was a little higher i.e. 8.96 versus urban areas where it was 8.82. Conclusions: In both rural and urban areas (100%) ate 6 food groups viz. cereals and millets, vegetables, milk and milk products, oil and butter, sugar/honey/jaggery and tea/coffee.