Dietary Assessment of Tribal Lactating Mothers in Koraput District of Odisha

Tribal people are socio-economically disadvantaged compared to other population group with regard to their food habits, dietary pattern and life style. Geographical isolation, lack of formal education, sociocultural taboos coupled with poverty lead them to development of various morbidities. keeping these facts in mind the present research is designed to study the “Dietary assessment of Tribal lactating mothers in Koraput district of Odisha”. One hundred lactating mothers of Koraput block and Damanjodi block of Koraput district of Odisha were selected by random purposive sampling method for the present study. The data was collected by questionnaire cum interview method. The results of the study revealed that majority of the respondents belonged to 19-25 years of age group having agriculture as primary occupation. All of them belonged to low income group. Most of the respondents had normal delivery. 100% immunization of mothers by TT injection was observed in surveyed population. In majority cases age at first delivery was 20-25 years. Only 8% respondents were not taking supplement from AWC due to poor quality food and long distance of their home. 96 per cent of the respondents were non-vegetarian and were taking three meals per day .Their diet was found to be dominated by rice, ischolar_mains and tubers and other vegetables. Milk and meat product, sugar, oil and pulses were found to be less in their diet in comparison to RDA. Their diet was found to be less than RDA i.e. Energy (3253.18 kcal), protein (67.12 g), fat (36.98 g), calcium (910.69 g) and iron (18.22 g) for 0-6 months lactating mothers and Energy (3197.58 kcal), protein (51.95 g), fat (32.99 g), calcium (910.12 g) and iron (12.95 g) for 7-12 lactating mothers. Different food fads and fallacies prevailed in that area were-rice flake and sago for better lactation, dry ginger for control bleeding. Pumpkin, bitter gourd, malayu (poi) etc. were avoided as they cause stomach disorder both in mothers and infants such as acidity and diarrhea. Thus it can be concluded that the community need women education to improve their health status by wise use of available food stuffs and government should provide good quality of supplementary foods to meet the dietary need of lactating mothers.