Assessing nutritional diversity of cropping systems in African villages

Background: In Sub-Saharan Africa, 40% of children under five years in age are chronically undernourished. As new investments and attention galvanize action on African agriculture to reduce hunger, there is an urgent need for metrics that monitor agricultural progress beyond calories produced per capita and address nutritional diversity essential for human health. In this study we demonstrate how an ecological tool, functional diversity (FD), has potential to address this need and provide new insights on nutritional diversity of cropping systems in rural Africa. Methods and Findings: Data on edible plant species diversity, food security and diet diversity were collected for 170 farms in three rural settings in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nutritional FD metrics were calculated based on farm species composition and species nutritional composition. Iron and vitamin A deficiency were determined from blood samples of 90 adult women. Nutritional FD metrics summarized the diversity of nutrients provided by the farm and showed variability between farms and villages. Regression of nutritional FD against species richness and expected FD enabled identification of key species that add nutrient diversity to the system and assessed the degree of redundancy for nutrient traits. Nutritional FD analysis demonstrated that depending on the original composition of species on farm or village, adding or removing individual species can have radically different outcomes for nutritional diversity. While correlations between nutritional FD, food and nutrition indicators were not significant at household level, associations between these variables were observed at village level. Conclusion: This study provides novel metrics to address nutritional diversity in farming systems and examples of how these metrics can help guide agricultural interventions towards adequate nutrient diversity. New hypotheses on the link between agro-diversity, food security and human nutrition are generated and strategies for future research are suggested calling for integration of agriculture, ecology, nutrition, and socio-economics

Meat consumption and diet quality and mortality in NHANES III

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: There is growing evidence that meat consumption is associated with total and cause-specific mortality. Our objective was to evaluate the association of meat intake and the healthy eating index (HEI) with total mortality, cancer and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. SUBJECTS/METHODS: Analyses are based on 17, 611 participants from Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) (1986-2010). Meat intake was assessed using a food frequency questionnaire administrated at baseline. Adherence to the HEI was analyzed with a single 24-h dietary recall. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of mortality according to five categories of meat consumption and three categories of the HEI score. RESULTS: During the follow-up period, 3683 deaths occurred, of which 1554 were due to CVD and 794 due to cancer. After multivariable adjustment, neither red and processed meat, nor white meat consumption were consistently associated with all-cause or cause-specific mortality. In men, white meat consumption tended to be inversely associated with total mortality (P for trend=0.02), but there was no such association among women. Significantly decreased mortality was observed in the top compared with the bottom third of the HEI score (HR=0.70, 95% CI 0.52-0.96). This association was only observed in men, but not in women. CONCLUSIONS: Meat consumption was not associated with mortality. A healthy diet according to HEI, however, was associated with a decreased total mortality in men, but not in women

Dietary patterns, assessed from a weighed food record, and survival among elderly participants from the United Kingdom

Background/Objectives: There is variability in the association between dietary intake and health outcomes across different countries, especially among the elderly. We used the gold standard dietary assessment method, a weighed food record, to examine the association between dietary pattern and mortality in a representative sample of community dwelling participants from Great Britain aged 65 years and older.Subjects/Methods: Dietary intake was recorded at baseline in 1017 elderly participants (520 men, 497 women, mean age 76.3&plusmn;7.4 years). Exploratory factor analysis was performed to examine dietary patterns and participants were followed up over an average of 9.2 years for mortality.Results: The factor analysis revealed four interpretable principal components accounting for approximately 9.8% of the total variance, with similar patterns across sex. A &lsquo;Mediterranean-style&rsquo; dietary pattern explained the greatest proportion of the variance (3.7%), followed by &lsquo;health-aware&rsquo; (2.2%), &lsquo;traditional&rsquo; (2.0%) and &lsquo;sweet and fat&rsquo; (1.9%) factors. There were a total of 683 deaths through follow-up. After adjustment for potential confounders, only the Mediterranean-style dietary pattern remained associated with mortality (highest vs lowest tertile; hazard ratio&frac14;0.82, 95% CI, 0.68&ndash;1.00). The benefits of the Mediterranean-style diet were only observed among women (hazard ratio&frac14;0.71, 95% CI 0.52&ndash;0.96) although in men the traditional diet was a risk factor for mortality (hazard ratio&frac14;1.30, 95% CI 1.00&ndash;1.71).Conclusions: Using a gold standard approach, our results confirm previous evidence that dietary patterns are important in longevity among the elderly.<br /