Amid the push for parents to ensure a healthy diet for their children, it is emerging that nutritional advice alone cannot solve the child nutrition crisis on the African continent.
An expert in nutrition says millions of parents know what their children should eat, but simply cannot afford it. Two-thirds of Africa’s population could not afford a healthy diet last year, with nutrient-rich foods such as eggs, meat and dairy often priced beyond the reach of low-income households.
According to Prof. Christine Taljaard-Krugell, an associate professor at North-West University’s Centre of Excellence for Nutrition and a registered dietitian, affordability must be viewed from the perspective of what individual households can actually spend.
She admits that children need adequate energy, protein, iron, zinc, vitamin A and iodine for growth, brain development and immune health. Yet many families are forced to rely heavily on maize, rice, cassava and other staples because they are cheaper and readily available.
The problem, Prof. Taljaard-Krugell explains, is not necessarily that parents lack nutritional knowledge. Rather, their choices are constrained by income, time, access to markets, cooking costs and household decision-making power.
“Affordability isn’t a property of a food. It depends on what a household can spend. But some foods do deliver far more nutrients, or more energy, per unit of money than others,” she indicated.
She recommends making affordable staples more nutritious by combining them with beans, peas or groundnuts, adding oil for energy and vitamin A absorption, and incorporating leafy vegetables towards the end of cooking.
For infants, she stresses exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, followed by complementary feeding alongside breastfeeding until two years and beyond. Porridge introduced from six months must also be sufficiently thick and nutrient-dense, warning that watery porridge may fill a child’s stomach without meeting nutritional needs.
The challenge, she says, extends beyond the household. Rural families often face longer distances, fewer food choices and higher prices, while pulses that are cheap to purchase can require significant cooking time and fuel.
Prof. Taljaard-Krugell argues that governments must therefore address the structural barriers preventing families from accessing nutritious food.
Without such interventions, she warns, nutritional advice risks doing more than failing to help as it can shift responsibility onto parents who have the least financial power to change their circumstances.
For Prof. Taljaard- Krugel, Africa’s child nutrition crisis is not simply a knowledge problem. It is increasingly an affordability, access and policy problem.
