Full Title
Affordability of Nutritious Diets
Session Overview
This learning lab will equip participants with skills to calculate and interpret indicators for the overall cost of nutritious diets. Policies and programs are increasingly focused on making nutritious diet more affordable, at the times and places where people are most at risk of malnutrition. The metrics introduced in this learning lab use prices of many different foods to compute the cost of meeting dietary standards at each time and place. In this session we will use data from India and other countries in South Asia and elsewhere to measure trends over time, seasonal fluctuations and spatial differences.
Learning Objectives/Outcomes
Participants will be able to:
1. Describe and obtain data on market prices and comparisons to income to measure affordability
2. Describe and obtain data on food composition, nutrient requirements and recommended diets to quantify nutritional standards
3. Describe and compute measures of affordability for nutritious diets based on the cost of meeting dietary standards such as the Cost of Nutrient Adequacy (CoNA) and Cost of Recommended Diets (CoRD)
4. Use the resulting measures to analyse impacts of food system change, infrastructure investments, or policy and program interventions on the affordability of nutritious diets in their country or region of interest.
Target Audience
ANH Academy members with professional interest in diet quality, dietary transition and food choice, and the use of market prices for policy analysis and program interventions.
Format
Lecture, discussion
Level & Prerequisites
Basic. No preparation is required, but participants are encouraged to review the following beforehand:
Cost of Nutritious Diets Consortium. 2018. Indicators and Tools for the Cost of Nutritious Diets. Boston, MA: Tufts University. Available at: http://ianda.nutrition.tufts.edu/content/indicators-and-tools-cost-nutritious-diets
Masters W, Bai Y, Herforth A, Sarpong D, Mishili F, Kinabo J, & Coates J. 2018. Measuring the Affordability of Nutritious Diets in Africa: Price Indexes for Diet Diversity and Cost of Nutrient Adequacy. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 100(5): 1285–1301.
Dizon F and Herforth A. 2018. The Cost of Nutritious Food in South Asia. Policy Research Working Paper Series. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank Group.
