Tips for a Quality Diet in Nepal: Meeting the Body's Needs for Protein
Introduction
According to a USAID profile of the country, rates of stunted and underweight children in Nepal have decreased in recent years, though they remain high. Estimates from the 2016 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) put stunting rates at 47% for children under five, meaning that they were too short for their age. In addition, the NDHS estimated that 32% of Nepalese children were underweight, or of low weight for age, and 12% were wasted, or too thin for their age (USAID, 2014; NDHS, 2016).
Stunting may have some causes that are not related to nutrition, but a significant contributing factor is the poor nutritional quality of children’s diets. A child’s stunting may also be linked to their mothers’ undernutrition and poor diet quality during pregnancy. Importantly, stunting is likely associated with chronic protein-energy malnutrition and inadequate protein quality on a daily basis (Arsenault and Brown, 2017). Unfortunately, once developmental changes (such as stunting and wasting) that result from poor diet take their toll on proper childhood development, they cannot be reversed (Woodruff et al., 2009; WHA, 2012).
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Tips for a Quality Diet in Nepal: Meeting the Body’s Needs for Protein