Impact of Harvest Lentil Vegetable Blend and Nutrition Education on Turkana Children's Health Outcomes

This nutrition education intervention was designed following the DESIGN procedure, informed by the Theory of Planned Behavior, and employed health literacy principles. The nutrition education sessions were held Monday through Saturday for a total of 8 weeks in a community building. This nutrition education intervention had 4 modules, module one covered the recommended breastfeeding practices, including early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding and continued breastfeeding. The second module was on the young child feeding practices, with a focus on the quality and quantity of the child's meal. The third module entailed WASH practices such as disinfection of drinking water, harms of open defecation, and other personal and household hygiene practices. The fourth module served as a comprehensive review of all previous modules.

Harvest Lentil Vegetable Blend is a dehydrated supplemental food produced from natural ingredients namely, rice, carrots, lentils and onions. This product was prepared by mixing it with water and boiling the mixture for approximately 25-35 minutes to a mid-consistency. In this study we implemented a blanket supplementary feeding program where all the recruited children in the intervention group received a meal of Harvest Lentil Vegetable Blend. The feeding program was on-site, and participating children aged 6-12 months received three-quarters of a cup of the supplemental food, (\~ 52 kcal/d). Children aged 13-23 months received 1 cup of the supplemental food (∼69 kcal/d), whereas children aged 24-59 months received 2 cups of the supplemental food (∼138 kcal/d). The feeding was implemented for 6 days a week (Monday through Saturday) for a total of eight weeks.