Maxqda research grants8/17/2023 In addition to these interviews, I also performed anthropometric tests on the participants of the study (height, weight, and skinfold measurements) to understand how the body changed over the course of a year due to seasonal dietary changes. During the interview, I also asked about their insect-eating habits since my dissertation research is focused on the use of chapulines (roasted grasshoppers) in this area of Mexico and the nutritional and cultural implications of this practice. Using a food frequency questionnaire, I asked the mothers to write what they ate that day, yesterday, and what they ate typically during a week of that particular month. For two weeks, we interviewed 31 parents (mostly mothers) at the preschool about their dietary habits. From collaborations made in 2018, I met with a community health doctor and nutritionist at a local clinic to develop my study with the preschool in the suburb San Martín Mexicapan. In January 2019, thanks to the generous funding of the Kellogg Graduate Research Grant, I traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico and began my pilot study that allowed me to test my hypotheses and future methodologies for my dissertation work in 2020-2021. It is to this community, and others in Oaxaca like it, that I dedicate my work my goal is that this work will benefit their livelihoods and wellbeing. The preschool was a community center that thrived on the interaction, and they made an impact on me just as much as I did on them. Mothers openly breastfed their babies, waiting to speak with the teacher, or even while speaking with me, and it was beautiful. I observed parent-teacher conferences, interactions between parents, and interactions between children. My interviews were primarily based in a preschool, and while there, I was able to see how this community interacted and flourished in a way that I would not have otherwise if I was solely based in a clinical setting. On the surface, my project focused on food and seasonality over the course of a year in southern Mexico, however, this project was actually centered on the hospitality, warmth, and good-hearted nature of the people with whom I interviewed and developed relationships. (Kayla Hurd performing a finger prick to measure a participant’s hemoglobin level with a point of care machine in Oaxaca.) Funding from the Kellogg Institute for International Studies will allow me to travel to Oaxaca during the first, second, and third sessions of this project. By examining dietary practices and taking blood spots concurrently, I will test how consumption patterns are directly expressed via hemoglobin levels. I propose that the consumption of grasshoppers during the wet season (May-October) reduces the prevalence of anemia in Oaxaca. Specifically, I will examine the correlation between diet, seasonality, blood iron levels, and health status in relation to individuals with anemia and those that consume insects. Utilizing these field excursions, I will explore how seasonality affects people’s diets in Oaxaca. Being the most common nutritional deficiency in the world, iron-deficiency anemia affects nearly 2 billion people.1,2 To examine this, my project will include four two-week field excursions from JanuaryDecember 2019, investigating how people in Oaxaca, Mexico offset anemia through the cultural practice of consuming insects.
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