Session overview

This learning lab will equip participants with skills to calculate and interpret indicators for the overall cost of nutritious diets.  Policies and programs are increasingly focused on making nutritious diet more affordable, at the times and places where people are most at risk of malnutrition. Previous work focuses on prices of individual foods, but new techniques use prices of many different foods to compute the overall cost of meeting dietary standards at each time and place.  In this session we will use real data from Ghana, Tanzania and elsewhere to measure trends over time, seasonal fluctuations and spatial differences. 

Learning objectives/outcomes

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Describe and obtain data on market prices to measure affordability;
2. Describe and obtain data on food composition, nutrient requirements and recommended diets to quantify nutritional standards;
3. Describe and compute measures of affordability for nutritious diets based on the cost of meeting international standards such as the Cost of Nutrient Adequacy (CoNA), Cost of Recommended Diets (CoRD), and a Nutritious-food Price Index (NPI);
4. Use the resulting measures to analyse impacts of food system change, infrastructure investments, or policy and program interventions on the affordability of nutritious diets in their country or region of interest.

Target audience

ANH Academy members with professional interests in diet quality, dietary transition and food choice, and the use of market prices for policy analysis and program interventions.

Format

Lecture and discussion, with handouts for hands-on calculation

Level and prerequisites

Introductory.  Participants may wish to read these documents beforehand: Indicators and tools for the cost of nutritious diets, and Measuring the Affordability of Nutritious Diets in Africa: Price Indexes for Diet Diversity and the Cost of Nutrient Adequacy.

View session slides