Abstract:
Traditional African Vegetables (TAVs) form a significant component of many families’
diets in Tanzania. Traditional African Vegetables contribute to reduction of
malnutrition, stunting and poor health among consumers by providing vitamins and
essential minerals in family diets. However, the consumption of vegetables is still below
the per capita per day intake level recommended by World Health Organization and Food
and Agriculture Organization, causing millions of deaths annually due to nutrientdeficiency related diseases. This study examined the factors that influence the nutrition
knowledge, frequency intake and farming households’ attitudes towards consumption of
traditional vegetables. The Standard Poison and the Generalized Poison models were
used for analysis. Factor analysis was used to assess the attitudes towards TAVs
consumption. Data were collected from randomly selected 63 households in Arumeru
District of Tanzania in the months of July to November 2015. Generalized Poison model
results showed that gender of the respondent, years of schooling, age of the respondent,
household size and TAVs farm size influenced farmers’ nutrition knowledge. Frequency
intake of TAVs is influenced by the farmers’ age, annual household income, household
size, TAVs farm size and market price of TAVs. Factor analysis results indicated that
medicinal properties of traditional vegetables positively influenced farmers’ intake of
vegetables. The “health factor” accounted for 31.4% of the total variance in the principal
components analysis. ‘Personal perception factor’ accounted for 13.79% whereas
‘personal taste factor’ accounted for 12.71% of the total variance. It was concluded that
rural farming households consume traditional vegetables majorly because of their health
attributes. Thus, there is need to improve medicinal and nutritional knowledge of these
crops among households. These findings imply that consumption of TAVs can be enhanced by educating households on nutrition importance and medicinal attributes of
TAVs. Besides, farmers need training on simple but user-friendly technologies that could
prolong storage and preserve freshness as well as nutritional contents of traditional
vegetables.
