Is dietary diversity an indicator of food security or dietary quality? A review of measurement issues and research needs.

Although dietary diversity is universally recognized as a key component of healthy diets, there is still a lack of consensus on how to measure and operationalize it. This paper focuses on the issues of dietary diversity in developing countries. It also draws upon experience from developed countries to address the following questions: 1. How is dietary diversity conceptualized, operationalized, and measured, and how does it relate operationally to dietary quality? 2. Is there an association between dietary diversity and nutrient adequacy in developing countries? Between dietary diversity and child growth? 3. What is the relationship between household-level dietary diversity and socioeconomic factors and food security? 4. What key measurement issues need to be addressed to better operationalize and understand dietary diversity? Dietary diversity is usually measured using a simple count of foods or food groups over a given reference period, but a number of different groupings and classification systems have been used, and reference periods have ranged from 1 to 15 days. This makes comparisons between studies difficult to interpret. The few studies that have validated dietary diversity against nutrient adequacy in developing countries confirm the well-documented positive relationship observed in developed countries. A