Biodiversity in the Diet in Vietnam

The Role of Agricultural Biodiversity in Thet Diet: a Vietnamese Study

Agricultural biodiversity can have an important role in improving diet diversity, quality and nutrition and can be seen as the foundation of the food and nutrition value chain. Increasing the availability and access to local agricultural and/or wild biodiversity genetic resources has the potential to increase production, making more food available for consumption as long as entitlements to access it exist. However, as the history of food security interventions has shown, increasing the production and supply of staple crops alone is not enough to improve food security or nutritional status. However, while agricultural diversification is an important component, it is not alone sufficient to improve diet diversity. Other system elements including women's education and knowledge, intra-household dynamics and women's status and cultural beliefs and practices that improves children's health and nutrition are important to ensure biodiversity has a successful role in improving dietary diversity and quality.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Nutritional Status; Food Intake; Biodiversity
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Promotion of a biodiverse diet

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 400
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Vietnam
  • Son La Province
    • Mai Son, Son La Province, Vietnam

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 6 months to 1 year (Child)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• villages: Characterized as Thai village. Only Thai villages will be selected for the study as agriculture practices, diets, food preferences, language and cultures can change drastically between ethnic groups.
• participants: i) Woman of reproductive age (between 15-49 years) who are the mother or primary caregiver of a child between 12 and 23 months of age. This age group is part of the critical 1000 day window for child development and marks the time when young children can potentially consume all foods from the household pot and consume a more diverse diet. As such, it is from this age group that biodiversity can have an effect on children's diets.

ii) Both the woman and the child should be permanent residents in the village selected and do not temporarily migrate outside the village cluster during the year.

Exclusion Criteria:

• villages: Urban center of commune/province as these villages/cities do not have agriculture or home garden opportunities
• participants: currently engaged in other agriculture or nutrition programme or intervention apart from what is offered by government extension workers

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Other
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control; The control group will continue to receive routine health check and nutrition education from health staff at commune health facilities. Access to agriculture extension services as offered by provincial staff will also continue as normal.
Experimental: Intervention; The intervention group will receive capacity building sessions on both Agriculture and Nutrition, in addition to access to routine health and nutrition checks, and agriculture extension as offered by commune and provincial staff as normal.	Behavioral: Promotion of a biodiverse diet; Component 1 - Participatory Identification of Intervention Approach (PIIA) Component 2. Local stakeholder consultation Component 3. Sensitisation of community Diversity club will receive capacity building from a Village health worker based on the prioritised species selected in component 2. The following topics will be covered for each species selected for promotion: Where to locally source inputs and expected price; How/when to prepare plots using organic inputs; Planting and best-practice management practices; Seed saving and storage; Possible intercropping combinations OR ecosystem services provided Component 4. Active Cooking demonstrations and Nutrition Education and counselling: Diversified cooking practices

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Consumption of nutrient rich food groups	Mean intakes (g) of Dark Green leafy vegetables, Vitamin A Rich Fruit and Vegetable and Legumes, nuts and seeds by mothers and young children.	24 months
Consumption of nutrient rich food groups	Proportion of women and children consuming 3 Dark Green leafy vegetables, Vitamin A Rich Fruit and Vegetable and Legumes, nuts and seeds by mothers and young children.	24 months
dietary quality	Proportion of women and children reaching estimated average requirement (EAR) of iron and vitamin A	24 months
Mean species richness consumed	Mean species richness consumed	24 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Food and nutrient intake	Proportion of women and children reaching EAR of 16 key nutrients	24 months
Nutritional Knowledge of Women	Mean score from a set of nutrient and food specific questions	24 months
Individual Dietary Diversity Score	Individual Dietary Diversity Score by women and children	24 months
Minimum Dietary Diversity	Proportion of women and children that consumed 5 or more food groups (out of 10)	24 months
nutritional status	Mean change from baseline in height-for-age Z-scores Mean change from baseline in weight-for-height Z-scores	24 months
Women's Empowerment	Decision making power on selection of species to cultivate, use at homestead and time spent	24 months
Consumption of processed foods and drinks	Mean daily intakes (g) of processed foods and drinks Mean proportion of daily energy, fat, salt and sugar intakes from processed foods	24 months
income	Household Income from sale of home garden species, agriculture, off-farm employment	24 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University Ghent
• Collaborators: HealthBridge

Publications and helpful links

Helpful Links

• Related Info

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): November 1, 2015
• Primary Completion (Actual): December 1, 2016
• Study Completion (Actual): January 1, 2017

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: December 2, 2021
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: December 2, 2021
• First Posted (Actual): December 3, 2021

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): December 3, 2021
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: December 2, 2021
• Last Verified: December 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Biodiversity
• Other Study ID Numbers: 2015/1205