Food-based dietary guidelines in Africa and their inclusivity of plant-based dietary patterns
Bibliographic record
Abstract
FuNDING:ProVeg Grants (Jul2023-0000001842) Food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) are powerful country-level policies that can guide healthy diets from sustainable food systems.They are associated with several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 2 (zero hunger), SDG 3 (good health and well-being) and SDG 13 (climate action).However, most FBDGs still favour animal-based food consumption despite increasing global adoption of plant-based dietary patterns to meet health and climate targets.Our objectives were to review the extent of African FBDGs and to analyse their inclusivity of plant-based dietary patterns.A state-of-the-art literature review was conducted, including qualitative analysis and quantitative scoring using the Balanced Food Choice Index system.We found that 12 African countries had FBDGs, although these contained less information about plant-based dietary patterns than the global average.The most balanced guidelines were from South Africa, Namibia, Benin, Gabon and Zambia.One-quarter of FBDGs in Africa refer to the sustainability of plant-based foods or dietary patterns.However, there was a significant lack of awareness of some forms of plant-based diets, with only two FBDGs discussing vegetarian diets.Five African dietary guidelines included plant-based alternatives to meat, milk or dairy.Future African FBDGs are encouraged to be inclusive of plant-based dietary choices and balance the various health, economic, environmental and ethical aspects that play a role in people's food choices. significance:• We reviewed food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) in Africa, finding a considerable shortfall in official recommendations for the broad spectrum of plant-based diets.Only 12 African countries have FBDGs, representing one-quarter of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) member countries from Africa.• According to our analysis, sustainability is included in one-quarter of African guidelines, because they explain the environmental benefits of plant-based foods or dietary patterns.Two guidelines discuss vegetarian diets, and five guidelines include plant-based alternatives to meat, milk or dairy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.024 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".