Analyzing household dietary diversity amongst urban food insecure households

Abstract

The high incidence of food insecurity in the City of Tshwane, South Africa, is of serious concern. The Household Dietary Diversity (HDD) index of the United States Aid (USAID) was used to scale the dietary patterns of 775 households, distributed in 73 clusters, from the 7 regions of the City of Tshwane. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied to the data to elucidate the patterns of such choices. The analysis found that due to income shocks, households adopted a fixed pattern of food group frequencies mostly cereals. This compromised nutritional safety and calls for income-based policies and nutritional awareness.