Biodiversity and dietary diversity in Vihiga Kenya

The objective of the study was to assess contribution of local agrobiodiversity to the diet and assess diet diversity in Vihiga County, Western Kenya // the dataset also serves as baseline survey in a 3 year project on participatory development of interventions to diversify diets in Vihiga. Dietary assessment was conducted using two non-consecutive 24 hour recalls from 1580 women and children in plenty and lean seasons. Household measures, monetary values, direct weighing, or clay moulding were used to assess portion sizes. We also estimated quantities of foods in form of fluids using volume estimations. Food compostion tables used were the following: Tanzanian food composition (Lukmanji et al., 2008) complemented with information from the USDA food composition table (USDA, 2014), the Kenyan food composition table (Sehmi, 1993) and the West African food composition table (Stadlmayr et al., 2012). Nutrients composition of raw ingredients was converted into cooked ones using the USDA Table for Nutrient Retention Factors (2007). Species Identification was done at the East African Herbarium, Botany department of National of Museums of Kenya for missing or unknown species.