Guidelines for measuring household and individual dietary diversity

This paper is a revised version of the FAO guidelines for measuring dietary diversity. Dietary diversity is a qualitative measure of food consumption that reflects household access to a variety of foods, and is also a proxy for nutrient adequacy of the diet of individuals. The household dietary diversity score (HDDS) is meant to reflect the economic ability of a household to access a variety of foods. It represents the food groups that a household or an individual has consumed over the preceding 24 hours. The main changes in this version of the guidelines are:

• the proposal for a new individual dietary diversity score based on results of the women's dietary diversity project.
• an annex on classifying food items into food groups. The guidelines also describe how to adapt and use the dietary diversity questionnaire, how to calculate each of the scores and how to create other indicators of interest from dietary diversity data. 

 FAO - October 2010