Minimum Acceptable Diet (MAD) Metadata

Children 6-23 months with a MInimum Acceptable Diet (MAD)

Minimum Acceptable Diet (MAD)

MAD

Percentage of children 6–23 months of age who consumed a minimum acceptable diet during the previous day.

Minimum acceptable diet is defined as:

• Breastfed children: receiving at least the minimum dietary diversity and minimum meal frequency for their age during the previous day
• Non-breastfed children: receiving at least the minimum dietary diversity and minimum meal frequency for their age during the previous day as well as at least two milk feeds

WHO guiding principles on feeding the breastfed child and the non-breastfed child recommend that children aged 6–23 months be fed meals at an appropriate frequency and in a sufficient variety to ensure, respectively, that energy and nutrient needs are met. This indicator combines information on minimum dietary diversity and minimum meal frequency, with the extra requirement that non-breastfed children should have received milk at least twice on the previous day.

Numerator: children 6–23 months of age who consumed a minimum acceptable diet during the previous day.

Denominator: children 6–23 months of age.

Source: World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 2021. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240018389

International definition and standards

Due to the small age range required for this indicator, surveys may not have a large enough sample size to produce robust estimates.

Quality assurance follows the practices of the survey from which the data is collected. For data collected through UNHCR's Standardized Expanded Nutrition Surveys (SENS), see quality assurance information on the SENS website (https://www.unhcr.org/sens/).