The Eat-Addis study was conducted by Addis Continental Institute of Public Health in collaboration with three Swedish universities: Uppsala, Lund, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The study was funded by FORMAS (the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development).

A dissemination meeting was held at the Hilton Hotel on November 17, 2022, to mark the completion of this long-term project which began in 2016. Key stakeholders from the Ministry of Health, regional and sub-city health offices, universities, other research institutions, the media, UN offices, and other partners attended this meeting. The main goal was to share key findings from this city-wide research, to identify areas that need attention in further analysis, and to identify unanswered questions for future research.

Accordingly, the team presented the results from 7 of either published results and preliminary findings of upcoming manuscripts. In their presentation they highlight these key points:

• Both healthy and unhealthy food are highly available in the neighborhood food environment
• Diet:
  • Nearly 50% of children in the study had inadequately diverse diet.

Household’s diet was monotonous, with less than 35% of households consuming nutrient rich food such as Vitamin A rich fruits and vegetables, green leafy vegetables, other fruits, meat, fish and eggs.

• Nutritional status:
  • Double burden of malnutrition is a challenge for the city with nearly 1 in 5 children being stunted and 1 in 10 children overweight/obese.
  • By the same token overweight/obesity is high in women (39%).
  • The same factors which are associated with the reduction of stunting are associated with increasing overweight.