Household migration and children's diet in Nepal: an exploratory study.

In our study setting, children in households with a migrant had higher dietary diversity scores, 0.69 on average, than their counterparts in households without a migrant. These children were approximately 43% points more likely to meet a minimum requirement for dietary diversity. These differences originated primarily from higher consumption of meat (41% points) and eggs (20% points). Approximately 37 percent of children in the sample consumed processed food during the 24 h preceding the survey. However, we found no evidence that migration was associated with the consumption of processed foods or with reduced frequency of breastfeeding. Our finding that migration is associated with higher consumption of meat and eggs is particularly encouraging, given that the protein deficiency in Nepal is estimated to be nearly 43 percent.