Dietary magnesium intakes among women of reproductive age in Ghana-A comparison of two dietary analysis programs

Helena J Bentil; Seth Adu-Afarwuah; Joseph S Rossi; Alison Tovar; Brietta M Oaks

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0284648

Dietary magnesium intakes among women of reproductive age in Ghana-A comparison of two dietary analysis programs

PLoS One. 2023 May 2;18(5):e0284648. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284648. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Helena J Bentil¹, Seth Adu-Afarwuah², Joseph S Rossi³, Alison Tovar¹, Brietta M Oaks¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, United States of America.
² Department of Nutrition and Food Science, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana.
³ Department of Psychology, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, United States of America.

Abstract

Background: Despite the importance of magnesium to health and most importantly to women of reproductive age who are entering pregnancy, very few surveys have investigated the magnesium status of women of reproductive age, particularly in Africa. Additionally, the software and programs used to analyze dietary intake vary across countries in the region.

Objective: To assess the dietary magnesium intake of women of reproductive age in Ghana and to compare the estimate of magnesium intake obtained from two commonly used dietary analysis programs.

Methods: We collected magnesium intake from 63 Ghanaian women using a semiquantitative 150-item food frequency questionnaire. Dietary data was analyzed using two different dietary analysis programs, Nutrient Data Software for Research (NDSR) and the Elizabeth Stewart Hands and Associates (ESHA) Food Processor Nutrition Analysis software. We used the Wilcoxon signed rank test to compare the mean differences between the two dietary programs.

Results: There were significant differences between the average dietary magnesium intake calculated by the two dietary programs, with ESHA estimating higher magnesium intake than NDSR (M±SE; ESHA: 200 ± 12 mg/day; NDSR: 168 ± 11 mg/day; p<0. 05). The ESHA database included some ethnic foods and was flexible in terms of searching for food items which we found to be more accurate in assessing the magnesium intake of women in Ghana. Using the ESHA software, 84% of the study women had intake below the recommended dietary allowances (RDA) of 320mg/day.

Conclusion: It is possible that the ESHA software provided an accurate estimate of magnesium in this population because it included specific ethnic foods. Concerted efforts such as magnesium supplementation and nutrition education should be considered to improve the magnesium intake of women of reproductive age in Ghana.

Copyright: © 2023 Bentil et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Diet*
Energy Intake
Female
Food
Ghana
Humans
Magnesium*
Nutritional Status
Pregnancy

Substances

Magnesium

Grants and funding

Supported by startup funding awarded to Brietta Oaks from the University of Rhode Island, USA. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.