Child dietary intake data by tablet‐based 24‐hour recall in rural Zambia (36.3)

Digital data collection represents the leading edge for dietary assessment in rural areas of low‐income countries, providing ease of use, speed of training and rapid availability of food and nutrient data. A multi‐pass 24 hour dietary recall program for the tablet‐based Android operating system was developed and used to collect dietary intake data for 4 to 8 year old children in rural Zambia. A list of 608 food items was incorporated into the tablet programming. Mothers of children enrolled into a biofortified maize flour efficacy trial were interviewed about the foods their child consumed over the previous 24 hours (n=1226). Staff followed prompts on the tablet for administering questions and entering data on the type, cooking method, quantity and source of food consumed at six time periods over the course of the previous 24 hours. At baseline, 8379 food items of 243 different types were reported. Children’s diets were predominated by maize porridge and vegetables such as leafy greens, tomato and onion. Dietary data uploaded from the tablets was linked to extant regional and USDA food composition tables using SAS 9.3 programming. The tablet was an effective tool for characterizing diets in a rural, low income country setting. Grant Funding Source : Supported by HarvestPlus