Diet surveys in rural areas.

Diet surveys generally involve weighing foods and/or filling out questionnaires neither of which may be very convenient in rural areas where the required equipment may be cumbersome and trained personnel likely to be unavailable. A volume method of "weighing" foods using trained community health workers is devised as a simpler and effective means of conducting diet surveys in India. Volumes of commonly consumed foods are converted into unit weights with the aid of marked translucent plastic containers. Measurements for liquids are marked on the same containers; thus a singlecontainer can be used for obtaining "weights" of dry substances (e.g. cereals pulses sugar) and volumes of liquids (e.g. milk oil). For locally available foods that cannot be measured by the container e.g. vegetables a conversion table for number and size is used. A pilot diet survey was conducted in a village where households were visited by pairs of interviewers. Information was collected on age sex physiological status and occupation for a random sample of 60 households (25% of the village total). Consumption units for foods were then calculated using the coefficients recommended by the National Institute of Nutrition (Hyderabad). A comparison of the 2 procedures indicates that the differences between them was not significant at the .05 level. Thus the new method which is simple inexpensive and suitable for use by unsophisticated personnel in a developing country can give consistent and reliable results. Community health workers trained to use the weight-by-volume technique are in the best position to obtain reliable data. In addition their involvement in diet surveys makes them more aware of the nutritional problems of the peoplethey serve and more effective in disseminating information on adequate nutrition and good dietary practices.