Response to Comment: Dietary Diversity

We received an important question on why there are "no dietary diversity indicators" in the Global Report Country Profiles.

The IEG does recognise the crucial importance of dietary diversity as a measure of diet quality.  To this end we have included indicators of diet diversity of 6-23 month olds and we have included calories from fruits and vegetables and calories from non-food staples as indicators of the diversity of food supply.  However, there are no data available to report on household or women’s dietary diversity from nationally representative data from a meaningful set of countries at this time.

Nevertheless, the IEG recognises the vital importance of these indicators and will include a panel in the Report summarising the information and making recommendations for how to and expand the global reach and strengthen this whole area of accountability.  We will further explore inclusion of some of these indicators in the 2015 Report.