A Comparative Study of Mother-Father Dyad Energy and Nutrient Intakes Assessed Objectively with a Wearable Camera Across Urban and Rural Households in Ghana

Among Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), the dearth of research into the dietary intakes of couples living in households can be attributed to a lack of context-appropriate tools for dietary assessment. A relatively new technology, the Automatic Ingestion Monitor-2, and custom Annotation Software was used to assess and compare food intake frequency and energy and nutrient intakes of mother-father dyads. Shared Plate Eating (SPE), a characteristic household food consumption pattern in many LMICs was also examined.Within rural households, the fathers had higher intakes of energy and all the nutrients of interest compared to the mothers. Dinner on all 3 days was the most frequent food intake pattern, observed for rural mother-father dyads. Almost all (96.7%) rural compared to about a third (36.7%) of urban households engaged in SPE. The AIM Technology has the potential to address many of the challenges posed by traditional dietary assessment methods in LMICs.