Developing food-based recommendations to complement distribution of a meat-based fortified food product for school-aged children from rural Quetzaltenango, Guatemala using the Optifood linear programming tool

BackgroundCurrent diets of school-aged children in Guatemala are nutritionally inadequate. Spammy®, a meat-based fortified food product was developed to complement the local diet. ObjectiveTo develop food-based recommendations (FBRs) using linear programming for children from a low socio-economic, rural area in the department of Quetzaltenango according to habitual dietary practices and the local food supply, and to examine the effect of this modeling with the addition of Spammy® given as food aid. Methods24-h dietary recall data for 100 school-aged children were used to derive linear programing inputs, including foods consumed, their portion sizes and frequency of intake. Optifood was used to develop FBRs based on existing dietary patterns using locally available and acceptable foods, and with the addition of Spammy®. The cost of the most affordable and nutritionally best diet was also modeled. ResultsA total of 5 food-based recommendations (promoting dairy, fortified grains, eggs, meat/poultry and fruit...