Diet histories in the urban slum

Thursday morning, I headed out with a translator to visit four families in the urban slums. We were to collect 24 hr. diet recalls and food expenditure information from two very poor familes and two not-as-poor families. Definitely not scientifically based, but to gain an observational snap shot of actual child feeding practices relate to socio-economic factors.

My translator was an 18 year old half British/half, Chinese/Indonesian girl who is bi-lingual. And while I don't think she completely understood what we were doing, she was a great source of information on local food and customs. This picture is of the 2nd to the poorest of the four families. They live in this one room house along with the 10 year old daughter and husband. The baby is 12 days old and probably because of the bad Jakarta traffic, was born in a taxi.

The interviews were essentially mini case-studies supporting what is already known - almost everyone spends a lot of money on pre-made food and snacks from street vendors which are essentially very poor nutritionally. However, the mom from the poorest family did not have enough money to always feed her family three meals a day let alone afford snacks for her kids. She rarely was able to provide them with a protein source. The second poorest family at least had cow skin on the menu (though the jury is still out on how much protein that contains). Regardless of income, mothers reported that their little kids were filling up on snack foods and not eating meals - and in a report I read, one reason for giving in is the community pressure to keep your kid quiet in such densely populated neighborhoods. So when they throw a tantrum, the mother's first priority is to make the child happy. Spoiling one's appetite is definitely a world-wide, time-honored practice so hardly surprising it exists here as it does everywhere.

The other habits of the urban poor is to shop daily, and cook every morning all the food that will be consumed that day, and without refrigeration, they keep reheating it for each meal until it is gone. It was really interesting getting to three out of the four families' homes - ranging from one room to perhaps four rooms in total. The mother of the poorest family - 7 children ranging in age from 3 to 24 with only one source of income and whatever the oldest sent home as a maid - came out to the alley to talk with us. She had, I believe, put on her best dress and did her hair nicely to meet with us. My translator became increasingly uncomfortable and then told me that the mother was acting very uncomfortable answering questions about how she fed her family within earshot of all the neighbors. Needless to say, we finished the interview without getting all the information we needed. (Pictures coming soon!)