Animal Source Foods (ASFs): Their Overall Nutritional Importance for Children Under-Five, and Cost-Protein Advantage in Low-income Countries with Particular Focus in Ethiopia: A Review

SNV (Netherlands Development Organization), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

*Corresponding author: Tekeba Eshetie, SNV (Netherlands Development Organization), PO box-40675, Roosevelt St. On the way from AU to Mexico Square, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Tel: +251987208580; E-mails: [email protected]; [email protected]

Received Date: January 08, 2025

Published Date: January 24, 2025

Citation: Tekeba E, et al. (2025). Animal Source Foods (ASFs): Their Overall Nutritional Importance for Children Under-Five, and Cost-Protein Advantage in Low-income Countries with Particular Focus in Ethiopia: A Review. Mathews J Vet Sci. 9(1):61.

Copyrights: Tekeba E, et al. © (2025).

Animal-source foods (ASFs) are nutritionally dense sources of energy, protein, and various essential macro and micronutrients that can help in alleviating malnutrition in general. They contribute a significant portion to the nutrient requirements of people to support normal development, physiological functioning, and overall good health. Undernutrition in some selected African countries indicated that it has debilitating impacts not only on the physical and cognitive capacity of the people but also on the national economies by reducing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by as much as 16%. Milk (cow milk), meat (beef), and eggs (chicken egg) currently provide around 13% of the energy and 28% of the protein consumed globally; in developed countries, this rises to 20 and 48% for energy and protein, respectively. In Ethiopia, most of the daily nutrition requirements are met by cereal-based diets. These cereals are rich in energy content but limited with other essential nutrients including protein. On the other hand, the price of these nutritionally dense diets has been skyrocketing for the last three years in the Addis Ababa market. During this reference period, the price of milk on average increased by 100% (50-100ETB/litter), beef price increased by 33.3% (600-800ETB/kg), and the price of eggs increased by 43% (7-10ETB/egg). These continuous increases in the price of these products coupled with the poor purchasing power of most of the society resulted in a decline in purchasing of these products. The most affected social strata are the growing children and women under reproductive and lactating ages and the rural people. On the other hand, these escalating prices, limited access, and affordability resulted in poor decision-making in purchasing one livestock product over the other. Therefore, this review study is initiated to identify one livestock product over the other based on their relative cost of protein to children under five and other pertinent beneficiaries as benchmarking. The study focused on the nutritional requirements of under-five children for normal biological and physical functions. However, the result can be applied to all individuals consuming ASFs for similar purposes. Current average price data was taken from Addis Ababa's selected market sites for evaluation and analysis made using simple descriptive statistics. The result of this review study indicated that, based on their protein economics, eggs are relatively cheaper than meat and milk (in value-for-money terms). If we assume a child eats exclusively eggs rather than meat to meet their daily protein requirements, there is a 143% cost-protein advantage. If a child consumes meat instead of milk to meet its daily protein requirements, the cost-protein advantage will be 51%. When one prefers eggs instead of milk, a child fed with eggs will be 243% more benefited in terms of protein cost ratio. In general, based on the cost-protein advantage and other added values like highly digestible protein, with 95% biological value, the consumption of eggs is more promising than the other two. However, the study has limitations in that, for a child to meet its daily nutrient requirement it needs a minimum dietary diversity not only one product like eggs. The review study also focused on protein being a major nutrient, not other nutrients. But the information will give a clue for consumers and decision-makers mainly on protein economics to invest more in the most economically feasible sector.

Keywords: Affordability, Animal Source Foods, Nutritionally Dense, Protein Economics.