Updates from the Nutrition Innovation Lab

As the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Nutrition comes to a close on September 30, 2021, we would like to sincerely thank all who have been involved in our work over the years. Our research and capacity building activities, spanning all the way back to 2010, could not have been accomplished without the dedication of our many local and global team members.

As part of its commitment to generating new evidence relevant to both nutrition and agriculture, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Nutrition has been investigating food safety issues, including the impact of food-borne mycotoxins on human nutrition and child growth.

Under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Associate Cooperative Agreement No. 72027820LA00003, Tufts University Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Nutrition is pleased to announce a new a partnership with Mindset, a research firm based in Jordan. Through a competitive bidding process, Mindset was chosen for its outstanding professional expertise and experiences as evidenced by its portfolio of projects including rigorous research designs and implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and capacity building initiatives.

Hospitals in Malawi did not have registered dietitians to identify and treat disease-related malnutrition until 2017. The Government of Malawi responded to this urgent need to train and license nutrition experts in its 2010 national nutrition strategy. It teamed up with the United States Agency for International Development

Malawi is one African country that has significantly improved the nutritional status and health of its citizens. For example, stunting decreased by 10% between 2010 and 2016, and vitamin A deficiency dropped from 22% in 2009 to 3.6% in 2016. But the country’s remaining challenges require relevant data about the local diet and its nutrient composition.

Sanele Nkomani, MS, RD is the recipient of 2020 Emerging Dietetic Leader Award from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. This award recognizes the competence and activities of dietitians, who have made contributions early in their dietetics careers.

A novel study conducted by Srinivasan et al. and published in Economics & Human Biology looks at changes in physical activity patterns, specifically drudgery reduction, and how these changes might affect the energy requirements of both men and women in rural households in Ghana and India. The study, “Drudgery reduction, physical activity and energy requirements in rural livelihoods,” explains that drudgery reduction is the substitution of activities with moderate/vigorous/very vigorous energy intensity with activities that use light energy intensity.

New research from the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Nutrition was recently published in Food Security. “The effects of male out-migration on household food security in rural Nepal ” details gender and food insecurity focusing on male-out migration in the mountains of Far West Nepal. (To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine male out-migration effects on household food security in this region in Nepal).

Fish has always been a food source that is rich in many nutrients. In a paper recently published by Dr. Andrew Throne-Lyman, he points out that the nutrient composition of fish is enough to improve nutrition in malnourished communities living near fisheries. 

Newly published research investigating the relation of maternal aflatoxin exposure with adverse birth outcomes such as birth weight, birth length, anthropometric z scores, low birth weight, small-for-gestational-age, stunting, and preterm birth.

Twenty percent of infants were of low birth rate and 32% were small-for-gestational-age. Sixteen percent of infants were stunted at birth and 13% of infants were born preterm.