Research report on Development of a tool to assess household security of micronutrient rich foods among Bangkok poor dwellers

Abstract

The development of a tool to assess security of micronutrient consumption in Bangkok poor population was undertaken in 7 clusters in Klong Tuey slum. The procedure consisted of two stages. First, formative research was conducted in 27 key informants in order to identify the key variables affecting food availability, access, and food utilization. Second, these variables were used in the formulation of the questionnaire. A consultation meeting with the nutrition experts was undertaken to draft appropriate and valid questionnaire. Pretesting of questionnaire was conducted among 205 households. The qualitative and quantitative methods gave the picture of the household profiles, the performance of the assessment tool (validity and reliability) and household food insecurity in Klong Tuey slum. The household size was 4.5, and 49% of households have extended families. The estimation of actual dependency ratio is 0.88. Median value of household income was 11,700 Baht/month. The majority (79%) earned less than 5,000 Baht per month per head. Approximately, 51% of total family income was spent on food. Foods available to the slum residents were diverse. Street foods and take-away foods were perceived as good food and commonly consumed because it was cheap and affordable. These foods were observed to contain less nutrients and were prepared in poor, unhygienic condition. On meal pattern, 49% of the respondents ate 3 meals a day. Among those who skipped meals, lunch was the main meal omitted. Those who ate 3 complete meals, they preferred high-calorie foods, thus consequently they have BMI more than 23.0. The performance of the assessment tool (validity and reliability) showed that 12 out of 21 variables were found reliable with the reliability coefficient of .5176. The factor analysis enabled to explain a variance of the total number of the entered variables as 62.3%. Using methods of rotation called oblimin with Kaiser Normalization, these selected variables showed precise construct validity. Substituting “existence of hunger” to represent “certainty of food acquisition” and “weighted sum score of micronutrient” to reflect “qualitative consumption of micronutrient” as dependent variables, further analysis was tested against the set of the recruited variables. The findings showed that the following have strong effect on ‘hunger’ such as ‘existence of money shortage (p=.00)’ and ‘state of unemployment (p=.01)’ while ‘household size’, ‘actual dependency ratio’, ‘skipping meals’ and ‘presence of chronic illnesses’ proved statistically significant estimation to the ‘weighted sum score of micronutrient consumption’. Importantly, the finding pointed that many crises and anxieties encountered by the respondents have aggravated their living condition. They perceived food supply and acquisition to be relatively of low priority. The results suggested that there is no single measure or indicator of household food insecurity. The program to improve the quality of life of the urban poor should not only focus on household food security alone but to other factors such as economic and social concerns, among others.