Food Taboos, Factors of Chronic Malnutrition in Bopa, South West Benin

The quality of the diet from the first hours of life is decisive. When it is not appropriate for pregnant women or infants, the after-effects are irreversible on the child’s bio-morphological and cognitive levels. This leads to chronic malnutrition. This study assessed the factors that explain adherence to dietary taboos or restrictions and the factors that are statistically significantly related to the choice of dietary restrictions in households housing stunted children under 5 years of age in southwest Benin. Data were collected in 2020, on a sample of 558 households in 40 villages in the commune of Bopa in southwest Benin. Socioeconomic data were collected from the heads of households and anthropometric data from 498 children. Univariate and bivariate descriptive analysis and binary logit regression were applied. According to the results, 36.3% of children are stunted. 76.2% of households with stunted children have food taboos. 69.6% of households have at least one taboo on the consumption of beef, goat, poultry, pork, eggs and fish. This results in a lack of micronutrients necessary for proper growth of the child. The gender of the head of the household, his or her occupation, religion, level of education, age category, area of residence, level of education of the wife of the head of the household and average monthly household income have statistically significant effects on adherence to food taboos and on restrictions in the household diet. To effectively combat stunting, advocacy targeting religious leaders and the local elite is needed.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].

This work did not receive any external funding.