Individual Dietary Diversity Score

The FAO individual-level indicator uses nine food groups: starchy staples; dark green leafy vegetables; other vitamin-A-rich fruits and vegetables; other fruits and vegetables; organ meat; meat and fish; eggs; legumes, nuts and seeds; and milk and milk products. Nine groups are used because the individual score is oriented toward micronutrient adequacy, so it separates vitamin-A-rich and iron-rich animal-source foods that drive nutrient quality. This contrasts with the twelve-group household indicator, which is broader and oriented toward food access rather than individual nutrition.

No. The IDDS is purely qualitative: it records only whether at least one food from each group was consumed, never the amount. Each group contributes at most one point regardless of portion size or frequency. This is by design — it keeps data collection cheap and fast and avoids the need for scales and food-composition tables — but it means the score captures the breadth of the diet, not its volume or energy content. For absolute intakes you need a quantitative 24-hour recall or weighed food record.

Not reliably. The IDDS is built and validated as a population-level indicator, and it rests on a single 24-hour recall, which reflects just one day rather than a person's habitual diet. Day-to-day variation in eating means any individual's one-day score is noisy. The appropriate uses are comparing groups, tracking trends, and evaluating programs at the population level, where individual noise averages out and the mean score becomes an informative measure of diet quality.