A Food Transfer Program without a Formal Education Component Modifies Complementary Feeding Practices in Poor Rural...

Area of Science:

• Public Health Nutrition
• Maternal and Child Health
• Nutritional Epidemiology

Background:

• Inadequate complementary feeding contributes to micronutrient deficiencies in young children.
• The Mexican government's Programa de Apoyo Alimentario (PAL) aimed to prevent malnutrition through food baskets or cash transfers, coupled with education.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of the PAL program on minimum dietary diversity and iron-rich/fortified food consumption in children aged 6-23 months.
• To compare the effectiveness of food baskets versus cash transfers, with and without educational components.

Main Methods:

• Secondary analysis of a randomized community trial with 3 intervention groups (food basket with education, food basket without education, cash transfer with education) and a control group.
• Difference-in-difference models were used to estimate the impact after 14 months of exposure in children aged 6-23 months at baseline and follow-up.
• Propensity score matching was employed to ensure comparability between treatment and control groups at baseline.

Main Results:

• The food basket without education intervention significantly increased consumption of iron-rich or iron-fortified foods by 31.2 percentage points (P < 0.01).
• This intervention also significantly increased the prevalence of minimum dietary diversity by 21.6 percentage points (P < 0.01) compared to the control.
• No significant impact was observed for the cash transfer or the food basket with education groups compared to the control.

Conclusions:

• Food baskets containing fortified complementary foods appear more effective than cash transfers for improving children's dietary quality.
• The educational component's impact could not be definitively determined due to differing results between the two food basket groups.
• Findings suggest targeted food interventions are crucial for addressing nutritional deficiencies in early childhood.