Title : Assessment of household dietary patterns and sustainability in Kenya using the ReDD and human trophic level indices
Abstract:
Food security is a global challenge, particularly in developing countries like Kenya. Access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food is fundamental to achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Moreover, adopting a sustainable diet that balances health and environmental impacts is preferable to focusing solely on caloric intake. Here, we use Kenya Integrated Household Budgets Survey (KIHBS) 2015-16 data to assess household consumption. Two dietary indices were used: the ReDD index, which evaluates multidimensional caloric deprivation, and the HTL index, which measures the energy intensity of diet composition and reflects the relative amounts of plant- as opposed to animal-based products.
Our findings show that 48% of Kenya's population is deprived of a healthy, diverse, and sustainable diet, with the majority, (51%) being in rural areas and 48% in urban areas. Additionally, northern counties suffered more deprivation than other regions. Furthermore, our study shows food group deprivation across households ranges from 0.99 to 1.00, meaning nearly all households lack access to one or more essential food groups. The sustainability index HTL revealed that most households consumed unsustainable diets, with scores ranging between 2.1 and 2.2 on a scale of 1 to 5. Counties with pastoralist communities showed high consumption of animal products but were found to lack essential food groups, leading to greater nutritional deprivation. In addition, quantile regression results suggest heterogeneous effects of key household characteristics predictors such as household size, education, income, and food expenditure on HTL and deprivation scores. These results highlight the need for policies that promote sufficient and diverse calorie intake while addressing environmental sustainability, particularly in the most food-insecure regions.
