NUTRITIONAL STATUS OF WOMAN REPRODUCTIVE AGE (15-49) AND PROXIMATE ANALYSIS OF SELECTED TRADITIONAL FOODS OF ASAYITA TOWN, AFAR REGION, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Understanding the root causes of the crisis is vital to tackle food and nutrition insecurity in Afar Pastoralist and Agro-pastoralist. The status of food insecurity and the associated factors, which are precipitating food insecurity and livelihood vulnerability, are not well understood in the study area. Hence, this study seeks to assess household food and dietary status in the Pastoralist and Agro-pastoralist of the Afar region. In addition, proximate compositions of the samples were compared with that of common traditional foods (teff injera and wheat bread. A survey and interview were used to study the household food and dietary security, and the Logistic Regression Model approach applied. The result shows that the proximate compositions of the samples maize injera (10.45%) and (68.31%) of protein and carbohydrate content, respectively and lower, when and the teff injera (10.49%) and (81.5%), respectively. However, higher fat, fiber, ash and energy content were 2.43%, 3.13%, 8.64% and 336.91 Kcal/100g), respectively, when compared to that of tef injera were 2.2%, 2.66%, 3.07% and 133.39 Kcal/100g, respectively. The survey result showed that based on the HFIAS classification measure of food security, about 35.3% of the sampled households were classified as food secure, 26.3% as mildly food insecure, 20.9% as moderately food insecure and 17.3% as severely food insecure. The pastoral and Agro-pastoral food insecurity and empirical findings of binary logistic regression model results verified the goodness-of-fit was tested by the Log-likelihood ratio (LR) test. Factors associated with dietary diversity and empirical findings of Multiple Linear Regression model results verified the Co-linearity test tested the goodness-of-fit. The R2 of the model is also 0.855. This result verifies that the model has a good fit for the data and explained significant non-zero variations in factors influencing food dietary diversity. The average frequency per week that the participants consumed cereals foods showed that nech teff injera was consumed in 3.44±0.650 frequency per week and bokolo injera 0.72 ±1.147 frequencies per week and injera firfir 0.74±0.438 frequency per week and nech sinde bread 1.62±1.350 frequency per week and gamboo 1.37±1.777 frequency per week. In conclusion, the study shows that the composite web of factors of sustainable diets and food security makes it challenging for Aysita woredas to understand the benefits and attention that should be given to enrichment, processing, and consuming such diets