Household food security in Iran: systematic review of Iranian articles

Introduction: Food and nutrition are basic needs of human society. Fulfilling this need lies in concept offood security. There are two main prerequisites for food security in any society: Ensure the availability andaccessibility of food in society and ensure the ability of households to obtain food. Household food securitymeans all family members have access to enough food for their minimum amount of necessary requirements.With a systematic review approach, this article wants to investigate the scales, prevalence, contributingfactors and consequences of household food security in Iran.Methods and Materials: Proceedings of the Persian writers on household food security without limits oftime, place and language publishing was searched thorough informative databases of PubMed, Elsevier , SID,Medlib, Magiran, Iranmedex, Irandoc, Google Scholar using "food security, food insecurity, associatedfactors, prevalence, causes, women, children and Iran" as search keywords.Findings: Six scales for assessing household food insecurity has been used in Iranian studies.According to various studies, regardless of the scale used, the prevalence of food insecurity was about 20 to60%; and in female-headed households and low-income communities, 75 and 86% have been reported.Reduce variation in food consumption and intake of essential micronutrients, poor nutritional status of infants,inconsistent effects on body mass index and weight of children, adolescents, women and men were the studiedconsequences of food insecurity.Conclusion: Household food security is considered as an indicator of individual and family healthwhich can be measured to help policy makers and other institutions to design, monitor and evaluate programsand interventions. At national and provincial levels, there are good policy and practices in this field .Due tonutritional transition, increased urbanization and demographic changes in Iran, investigating food securitystatus at the individual and family level, influencing social and cultural factors, its consequences, Design,implement and evaluate proper interventions need further consideration by policy makers, governmentofficials and experts in the country.Keywords: Household food security, prevalence, influencing factors, consequences, Iran

The status, policies and programs of nutrition among in nursing mothers: A review article

Background & Objective: Pregnant or lactating women and children are the two population group most vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies. The aim of this study was to review the nutritional status of lactating women, as one of the main loops of the chain of effective factors on health of the generation and society, assessing the supportive nutrition programs in Iran and to provide solutions in this regard. Method: This review was conducted in April 2014. All related articles on the databases of IranMedex, SID (Scientific Information database) and PubMed were investigated with no time limit. After reviewing the abstracts, 15 Persian articles and 13 English articles were fully reviewed. Results: The results of the few available studies on the nutritional status of lactating women indicate deficiencies or inappropriate nutritional patterns among lactating women. Although in formulation of nutritional strategies, pregnant or lactating women and children often receive equal attention, women are practically the target of nutrition and health programs to improve the growth of the fetus and little attention have been paid to their health and nutritional needs. Nutrition of lactating women have been forgotten and solely focus on prenatal nutrition of women means ignoring the more fundamental nutritional problem in women throughout their lives. Conclusion: Implementing a holistic approach to health and nutrition of women instead of the traditional approach, which focuses solely on a particular period of life, leads to health promotion and ensuring the health of women and the next generation