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Food taboos during pregnancy: meta-analysis on cross cultural differences suggests specific, diet-related pressures on childbirth among agriculturalists

ABSTRACT: Pregnancy is the most delicate stage of human life history as well as a common target of food taboos across cultures. Despite puzzling evidence that many pregnant women across the world reduce their intake of nutritious foods to accomplish cultural norms, no study has provided statistical analysis of cross-cultural variation in food taboos during pregnancy. Moreover, antenatal practices among forager and agriculturalists have never been compared, despite subsistence mode being known to affect staple foods and lifestyle directly. This gap hinders to us from understanding the overall threats attributed to pregnancy, and their perceived nutritional causes around the world. The present study constitutes the first cross-cultural meta-analysis on food taboos during pregnancy. We examined thirty-two articles on dietary antenatal restrictions among agricultural and non-agricultural societies, in order to: (i) identify cross-culturally targeted animal, plant and miscellaneous foods; (ii) define major clusters of taboo focus; (iii) test the hypothesis that food types and clusters of focus distribute differently between agricultural and non-agricultural taboos; and (iv) test the hypothesis that food types distribute differently across the clusters of taboo focus. All data were analysed in SPSS and RStudio using chi-squared tests and Fisher’s exact tests. We detected a gradient in taboo focus that ranged from no direct physiological interest to the fear of varied physiological complications to a very specific concern over increased birth weight and difficult delivery. Non-agricultural taboos were more likely to target non-domesticated animal foods and to be justified by concerns not directly linked to the physiological sphere, whereas agricultural taboos tended to targed more cultivated and processed products and showed a stronger association with concerns over increased birth weight. Despite some methodological discrepancies in the existing literature on food taboos during pregnancy, our results illustrate that such cultural traits are useful for detecting perception of biological pressures on reproduction across cultures. Indeed, the widespread concern over birth weight and carbohydrate rich foods overlaps with clinical evidence that obstructed labor is a major threat to maternal life in Africa, Asia and Eurasia. Furthermore, asymmetry in the frequency of such concern across subsistence modes aligns with the evolutionary perspective that agriculture may have exacerbated delivery complications. This study highlights the need for the improved understanding of dietary behaviors during pregnancy across the world, addressing the role of obstructed labor as a key point of convergence between clinical, evolutionary and cultural issues in human behavior.

SUBMITTER: Maggiulli O

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9281602 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:IntroductionMost communities, rural or urban, have taboos regarding foods to avoid during pregnancy, and most have local explanations for why certain foods should be avoided. Such taboos may have health benefits, but they also can have large nutritional and health costs to mothers and fetuses. As such, understanding local pregnancy food taboos is an important public health goal, especially in contexts where food resources are limited. Despite this, information regarding food taboos is limited in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study assessed food taboos, related misconceptions, and associated factors among pregnant women in Northern Ethiopia.MethodsA cross-sectional study of 332 pregnant women in antenatal care (ANC) follow-up at selected private clinics in Mekelle city, Tigray, Ethiopa, recruited between April and May, 2017. Using a semi-structured questionnaire, we assessed whether respondents' observed food taboos, what types of foods they avoided, their perceived reasons for avoidance, diversity of respondents' diets during pregnancy, and respondents' socio-demographic characteristics. After reporting frequency statistics for categorical variables and central tendencies (mean and standard deviation) of continuous variables, bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify the socio-demographic factors and diet diversity associated with food taboo practices.ResultsAround 12% of the pregnant women avoided at least one type of food during their current pregnancy for one or more reasons. These mothers avoided eating items such as yogurt, banana, legumes, honey, and "kollo" (roasted barley and wheat). The most common reasons given for the avoidances were that the foods were (mistakenly) believed to cause: abortion; abdominal cramps in the mother and newborn; prolonged labor; or coating of the fetus's body. Maternal education (diploma and above) (AOR: 4.55, 95% CI: 1.93, 10.31) and marital status (single) were found to be negatively associated (protective factors) with observances of pregnancy food taboos. Approximately 79% of respondents had pregnancy diets that were insufficiently diverse, although we did not find any statistical evidence that this was associated with adhering to food taboos.ConclusionThe misconceptions related to pregnancy food taboos should be discouraged insofar as they may restrict women's consumption of nutritious foods which could support maternal health and healthy fetal development. Health providers should counsel pregnant women and their husbands about appropriate pregnancy nutrition during ANC visits.

Project description:BackgroundPoor maternal nutrition adversely affects pregnancy and birth outcomes. In many societies, there are dietary restrictions due to misconceptions or food taboos during pregnancy which consequently results in the depletion of important nutrients. These cultural malpractices and beliefs can influence the dietary intake of pregnant women which subsequently affects the birth outcome. The study aimed at exploring the extent of food taboos and misconceptions during pregnancy in rural communities of Illu Aba Bor Zone, Southwest Ethiopia.MethodsA qualitative study was conducted using an in-depth interviews of key informants and focus group discussions among purposively selected pregnant women and their husbands, health care workers, health extension workers, and elderly people. Data were transcribed verbatim, thematized; color-coded, and analyzed manually using the thematic framework method.ResultThorough reading and review of the transcripts generated three major themes. The primary theme was the belief and practice of taboos related to the intake of certain food items during pregnancy. Pregnant women, their husbands, and mothers-in-law believed that certain foods should be avoided during pregnancy. The second theme was foods that were held as taboo and the reason attached to it. The most common food items held as taboo were related to the consumption of vegetables like cabbage, pumpkin, milk and milk products, sugar cane, fruits like bananas and avocado and egg. The main reasons to avoid these foods were beliefs that it can be plastered on the fetal head, making fatty baby which is difficult for delivery. The third theme was the reasons underlying adherence to food taboos which is deeply embedded in the person's believes and attitudes of the pregnant women, who were nested within the influence of the social environment surrounding them and the traditional beliefs and values of the society in general.ConclusionsThe results showed a widespread practice of food taboos during pregnancy in the study area. The finding suggested that there is a need for strengthening the nutrition counseling components of antenatal care follow-up and planning comprehensive nutrition education through involving important others to dispel such traditional beliefs and prevent food taboo practices in the study community.

Project description:We present CROCUFID: a CROss-CUltural Food Image Database that currently contains 840 images, including 479 food images with detailed metadata and 165 images of non-food items. The database includes images of sweet, savory, natural, and processed food from Western and Asian cuisines. To create sufficient variability in valence and arousal we included images of food with different degrees of appetitiveness (fresh, unfamiliar, molded or rotten, spoiled, and partly consumed). We used a standardized photographing protocol, resulting in high resolution images depicting all food items on a standard background (a white plate), seen from a fixed viewing (45°) angle. CROCUFID is freely available under the CC-By Attribution 4.0 International license and hosted on the OSF repository. The advantages of the CROCUFID database over other databases are its (1) free availability, (2) full coverage of the valence - arousal space, (3) use of standardized recording methods, (4) inclusion of multiple cuisines and unfamiliar foods, (5) availability of normative and demographic data, (6) high image quality and (7) capability to support future (e.g., virtual and augmented reality) applications. Individuals from the United Kingdom (N = 266), North-America (N = 275), and Japan (N = 264) provided normative ratings of valence, arousal, perceived healthiness, and desire-to-eat using visual analog scales (VAS). In addition, for each image we computed 17 characteristics that are known to influence affective observer responses (e.g., texture, regularity, complexity, and colorfulness). Significant differences between groups and significant correlations between image characteristics and normative ratings were in accordance with previous research, indicating the validity of CROCUFID. We expect that CROCUFID will facilitate comparability across studies and advance experimental research on the determinants of food-elicited emotions. We plan to extend CROCUFID in the future with images of food from a wide range of different cuisines and with non-food images (for applications in for instance neuro-physiological studies). We invite researchers from all parts of the world to contribute to this effort by creating similar image sets that can be linked to this collection, so that CROCUFID will grow into a truly multicultural food database.

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Food taboos during pregnancy: meta-analysis on cross cultural differences suggests specific, diet-related pressures on childbirth among agriculturalists

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