Exploring Differences in Dietary Diversity and Micronutrient Adequacy between Costa Rican and Mexican Adolescents

Abstract

Diet diversity becomes especially relevant during adolescence to satisfy the adequate micronutrient intake. Diet diversity (DD) and micronutrient probability of adequacy (PA) were studied in 818 Costa Rican (CR) and 1202 Mexican (MX) adolescents aged 13–18 years. DD was compared using the Minimum Dietary Diversity (MDD) score. Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves were employed to identify the optimal MDD for each sample from the respective countries. The mean MDD for the overall CR sample was 4.17 ± 1.43 points, and for the MX sample, the mean MDD was 4.68 ± 1.48 points. The proportion of adolescents with a DD was significantly higher in Costa Rica than in Mexico (66.5% vs. 55.6%; p p p < 0.0001). In Costa Rica and Mexico, nutritional interventions and assessing the compliance of food-fortifying programs are needed to improve the PA of diverse micronutrients.

Keywords

• minimum dietary diversity
• micronutrient probability of adequacy
• adolescents
• Latin American countries