The Indian School of Business (ISB) on June 26 said that a new research study has revealed that wild foods contribute to women’s, especially the tribal, higher dietary diversity in India and constitute a substantial contribution to food and nutrition security.
The study titled ‘Wild foods contribute to women’s higher dietary diversity in India’, published in the journal Nature Food, highlights the role of food items collected from forests and common lands in women’s diets in rural India.
The ISB in a statement said that as a part of the study, researchers collected monthly data on diet recall from 570 households across two tribal (Adivasi) dominated and forested districts in Jharkhand and West Bengal and found that wild food consumption significantly contributes to women’s diets, particularly during the months of June and July, when other crops are still in the growing stages in fields. Results of the study revealed that women who consumed wild foods had higher average dietary diversity scores (13% and 9% higher in June and July, respectively) than those who did not collect wild foods.
