Dearth in access to nutrition across socio-economic strata among rural households in West Bengal, India

Abstract

Using a cross-sectional survey, the study aims to understand scarcity of nutrition consumption among rural households in West Bengal. Most of the research related to nutrition and health measured under-nutrition at household using anthropometric outcomes of household members, hence, ignored nutrients based deprivations. This study has taken an advantage to analyses household’s nutrition deprivation by comparing between nutrients requirement and consumption, calculated using RDA norms as given by Indian Council of Medical Research and nutrients coefficients of Indian foods as given by National Institute of Nutrition, respectively. In addition to estimating of calorie, protein and fat deprivation, the study examines multiple nutrients deprivations in the households. Bi-variate analysis was carried out to examine socio-economic variations of nutritional deprivation whereas multi-variates regression analysis, such as binary logistic model and multinomial regression model, were used to determine significant risk factors of nutritional deficiency as well as multi-nutrients deficiency in the households. The findings reveal that more than half (55%) of households were deficient in multiple nutrients. Furthermore, multi-variate analyses show that size of households, working as agricultural labor and living in an extent family were positively associated with the nutrition deficiency. On other hand, household’s income, education of head of the households were negatively associated nutritional deficiency at households.