Traditional Individual and Environmental Determinants of Healthy Eating in Vihiga County, Western Kenya
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Research Center, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de Especialidades Espíritu Santo, Samborondom 092301, Ecuador
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Rural Research Center, Faculty of Social Sciences, Escuela Superior Politècnica del Litoral, Guayaquil 090112, Ecuador
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Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, Via dei Tre Denari 472/a, 00054 Rome, Italy
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Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, 165 00 Prague, Czech Republic
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Maria Kapsokefalou
Nutrients 2022, 14(14), 2791; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14142791
Received: 13 April 2022
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Revised: 1 July 2022
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Accepted: 5 July 2022
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Published: 7 July 2022
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Traditional Diets: Sustainability, Sovereignty, Safety, Food Security and Health Dimensions)
Traditional ethnic groups in Kenya are unlikely to eat a healthy and diversified diet due to many individual and environmental factors, which may result in poor health status. Therefore, the determinants of eating behavior need to be identified prior to any public health action. For this study, focus group discussions (15 in total) in a double-layer design were conducted, comprising adult men and women from 5 villages of Vihiga County. Questions explored knowledge; barriers and cues to action toward eating a healthy diet containing a variety of foods; including indigenous food species. We found that healthy eating concepts are known; however, several taboos that restrict food consumption reduce local diet quality in terms of diversity. Nutrition education is a cue to action. We identified several individual and environmental determinants of eating behavior in the studied communities. Public health action should focus on supporting healthy eating behaviors and refining some taboos’ beliefs.
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Keywords:
diet; determinants of eating; environment; traditional foods; taboos
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
MDPI and ACS Style
Penafiel, D.; Termote, C.; Van Damme, P. Traditional Individual and Environmental Determinants of Healthy Eating in Vihiga County, Western Kenya. Nutrients 2022, 14, 2791. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14142791
AMA Style
Penafiel D, Termote C, Van Damme P. Traditional Individual and Environmental Determinants of Healthy Eating in Vihiga County, Western Kenya. Nutrients. 2022; 14(14):2791. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14142791
Chicago/Turabian StylePenafiel, Daniela, Celine Termote, and Patrick Van Damme. 2022. "Traditional Individual and Environmental Determinants of Healthy Eating in Vihiga County, Western Kenya" Nutrients 14, no. 14: 2791. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14142791
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