DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Food, Power and Gender: Diet during Pregnancy among the Urban Poor in New Delhi, India

University Of Oregon Eugene, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

0003964 Moreno-Black / Vallianatos Poor health and nutrition in pregnant women is the beginning of a vicious cycle of faltering growth in childhood and later life. This project involves the dissertation research of a cultural anthropologist from the University of Oregon, studying how the health of women and children is affected by maternal nutritional status, which is in turn affected by cultural dietary proscriptions during pregnancy. The student will examine how social relations of slum-dwellers in New Delhi, India produce inequalities of class, caste and gender which affect food consumption during pregnancy. The project includes ethnographic exploration of relations between cultural diet proscriptions and pregnant women's nutritional status though study of the local cultural explanatory model of appropriate diet; standard diet and anthropometric analysis of nutrient shortages of pregnant women; an ethnographic examination of the relation between a woman's pregnancy history and her current diet; an ethnographic study of the effect of rural-urban migration on family structure and the resulting effect on food consumption by pregnant women; and an analysis of how current health education programs can be improved. The results of this project will be important for health planners in the developing world, will provide valuable information about this region of the world, and will help train a young social scientist.