BY SPRING CHENJP '25
As an ice hockey player in high school, Calla Doh realized she played and felt different depending on what she ate before games. Three years later, her interest in nutrition would lead her to spend two months in India researching causes and solutions to maternal and child malnutrition. As one of 14 World Food Prize Borlaug-Ruan interns nationally, Doh was matched with the nonprofit S M Sehgal Foundation and worked in the Haryana state’s Nuh district.
“There is a much bigger and more pressing problem that I saw, which was food insecurity,” said Doh, who is majoring in environmental science with a concentration in ecology and evolutionary biology and is minoring in poverty, justice and human capabilities.
Through her research, which included surveys, interviews and analysis of foods villagers recalled eating, Doh found access to nutritionally rich food was one determinant of malnutrition in women and children.
“Most of these households were farming households,” Doh said. “Despite high yields of different produce, there wasn’t enough of those micronutrient-rich foods translated into women’s consumption patterns — partly because, we hypothesized, people would sell them in order to receive disposable income rather than consume it, which makes sense given the stark economic inequality prevalent throughout the region.”
Cultural taboos also played a role, Doh said.
“Culturally, there were some food restrictions and food taboos that prevented women from eating specific types or entire groups of food during their menstruation, for example, that would limit the amount of micronutrients they were able to get,” Doh said.
One solution Doh recommended was diversifying farmer income streams.
“Within agriculture, they have farming, animal husbandry and kitchen gardens,” Doh said. “The Sehgal Foundation wants to help farmers not only strengthen those agricultural sources of income, but also connect them with other nonagricultural sources of income generation.”
Doh emphasized that when addressing cultural taboos, empowerment was key for long-lasting change.
“How do we balance preserving this culture and acknowledging and respecting people’s cultural roots while conveying the importance of nutrition?” Doh said. “One way to do this is focusing more on the health and implicit benefits that people can receive, from your mood to your ability to work — focusing on empowering people rather than shaming them.”