Women's strategies to alleviate nutritional stress in a rural African society

Many agricultural populations are subject to chronic or seasonal undernutri tion, reproductive women and children often being most vulnerable. This pap er presents quantitative and qualitative data on food consumption. food dis tribution practices, food taboos, garden sizes and work effort to show how Lese horticulturalist women living in the Ituri Forest of northeast Democra tic Republic of Congo attempt to alleviate nutritional stress. The Lese exp erience an annual hunger season when approximately one quarter of the popul ation suffer from energy deficiency. Nutritional intake is also compromised by a complex system of food taboos against meat from wild forest animals. Anthropometric data collected over several years suggest that Lese women su ffer from nutritional stress more than men during the hunger season. They a lso have more food taboos particularly during pregnancy and lactation. Thei r low fertility is compounded by nutritional stress, Despite these inequiti es, Lese women use several strategies to improve their food intake. Since t hey are responsible for all household cooking, they manipulate food portion s. During the hunger season, they snack frequently, and increase their cons umption of palliative foods. Women with more food taboos plant larger garde ns to supplement their diet with vegetable foods. Although this results in their consumption of more daily protein, they work harder compared to women with smaller gardens. Women cheat in their adherence to specific food tabo os by actively discounting them, or by eating prophylactic plants that supp osedly prevent the consequences (usually illness) of eating tabooed foods. In addition, women resort to subterfuge to access desirable resources. Lese women do not reduce work effort during the hunger season, but adapt physio logically by reducing resting metabolic rates during periods of weight loss . These results point to the ability of Lese women to minimize the ecologic al and cultural constraints on their nutrition. More data, however. are req uired to assess the long-term effectiveness of these strategies. (C) 1998 E lsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.