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This paper aims to describe food insecurity status, food consumption patterns of households and nutritional status of families residing along the baobab belt in Kitui and Kilifi counties of Kenya. It also explores associations between these and household socio-demographic characteristics.

A cross-sectional study design was performed with a sample of 216 caregiver/child pairs interviewed. Tablet-based semi-structured questions were used to obtain information on socio-demographic characteristics of children (6-13 years) and caregivers. Food insecurity status was assessed using the household food insecurity experience scale. Information on food consumption was obtained from qualitative 24-h recall as a basis for calculating a household dietary diversity score. Data were also obtained from a non-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Anthropometric measurements of children and caregivers’ height and weight were taken to assess their nutritional status. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science version 24 and WHO AnthroPlus 1.0.4.

The majority (98.2 per cent) of the households were food insecurity despite 81.5 and 57.4 per cent in Kitui and Kilifi counties, respectively, owning baobab trees. About 32.1 per cent of the households had poor dietary diversity scores (< 4). The prevalence of stunting (28.6 per cent), wasting (11.6 per cent) and underweight (25 per cent) rates among children were high. A significant association was observed between the children stunting rates with their age (p = 0.027), and also with household’s food security status (p < 0.001). Of the caregivers, 14.8 per cent were underweight, 18.1 per cent were overweight and 8.8 per cent were obese. There was significant association between the nutrition status of the caregivers and gender of the children (p < 0.001) and also with stunting rates of children (p = 0.047).

The study provides data on the current food security status and food consumption patterns of households and nutritional status of families residing along the baobab belt in Kenya which are mostly areas of marginal agricultural potential. The findings indicate a need for appropriate dietary improvements.

Despite the large body of research on consumers’ willingness-to-pay for new food, few studies have tried to integrate new technology-based systems and improve their validity. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the integration of short messaging service (SMS) in experimental auctions.

Based on a case study on iodine biofortified food with 180 household decision makers in Africa, a standard Becker-Degroot-Marschak procedure was compared with the novel SMS-based procedure through five information/auction rounds. Thereby, a standard protocol commonly employed in validation of medical diagnostic tests was adopted, assessing the sensitivity, specificity, precision, negative predictive values, likelihood ratios and post-test probability.

The SMS-based elicitation exhibited high levels of sensitivity (89-95 per cent), specificity (63-73 per cent), precision (40-60 per cent), NPV (92-98 per cent), LR+(2.6-3.3) and LR−(0.08-0.2) for all the auction rounds. The post-test plot indicates that the novel procedure is particularly consistent in ascertaining positive and negative valuations for a new food product.

Even though SMS-based bidding is shown to be an accurate, but also convenient and attractive bidding procedure, which is in line with novel ways of purchasing food, further validation is inevitable to determine its reliability in different contexts and its most effective use.