A study of the diets of boys and girls living in two Indian states has found that by the age of 15, boys are likely to be eating a wider variety of foods than girls.
The study done by the University of Oxford and Imperial College London in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, says adolescent girls are less likely than boys to consume costlier foods that are rich in proteins, vitamins and micronutrients necessary for their healthy development.
The gender gap in diet appears to be particularly marked in families that have high aspirations for their children’s education.
Researchers from the Young Lives study interviewed children and their parents, or guardians, living in two Indian states.
By the age of 15, a gender gap appears with the boys likely to eat half a food group more than the girls of the same age.
The results showed a gap even after controlling other factors such as the onset of puberty, time spent working or at school, or dietary behaviours such as number of meals.
The study finds that the gender gap in diet is linked with the parents’ educational aspirations, and not with other potential factors such as household income or the mother’s educational background.
The gender gap in diet was found to be not as strong in families with low academic aspirations for their children.
It highlights the fact that India has the highest population of 10-24 year-olds in the world, and the world’s highest burden of malnutrition, with children and young women being the most malnourished groups.
It notes that women in India tend to have children at a young age, and concludes that policies that focus on the nutrition of adolescent girls may be needed to break the cycle of malnutrition from young mothers to their children.
“The way that food is doled out within households may reflect parents’ investment in their children’s education and health,” Elisabetta Aurino, study author and Young Lives Associate Researcher said.
The gender gap is particularly striking in homes where parents have high education aspirations.
We looked for other possible factors, but the gap is not so apparent when we compare richer against poorer households, or in households where maternal education is high or low.
They collected data from the same samples of about 1,000 older children and 2,000 younger children in 2006, 2009 and 2013 when the children were five, eight, 12 and 15-years-old.
The children (or their parents or guardians if they were under the age of eight) were asked about what they had eaten in the last 24 hours.
PTI