Un colis de référence pour une aide alimentaire équilibrée

Practical and specific guidelines are needed to design nutritionally adequate food baskets for food aid. Since the weight of foods is the only information on food easily available and understandable by non nutritionist field-workers, weight-based guidelines were presently developed. They are compatible with the French food-based dietary guidelines and take into account that food-insecure individuals have limited access to some foods, such as meat, fish, fruit and vegetables, while refined cereals are the main component of their diets. These guidelines can also be used to evaluate the dietary quality of existing food aid. factual food baskets delivered by food aid agencies in France were compared to the recommended food basket. The results show that fruit and vegetables are severely lacking (only 10% of total food basket weight instead of 33% recommended) while staples, mainly refined cereals, are given in excess (40% instead of 15%), as well as sugar- or salt-containing food products (9% instead of 2%). This results show that it is necessary to improve the dietary quality of food aid in France and suggest that simple weight-based recommendations can be helpful.