Caregiver nutrition knowledge, attitudes, and child feeding practices in Jenu Kuruba and Yerava tribal communities of Karnataka, India

Child undernutrition is high among India’s most marginalized tribal groups, yet few studies link caregivers’ nutritional knowledge, attitudes and feeding practices to what children in these communities eat. This study examined those factors and children’s dietary diversity among Jenu Kuruba and Yerava households in H.D. Kotte, Mysore District, Karnataka. A community-based cross-sectional enumeration of all eligible households in the surveyed hamlets yielded 257 caregiver–child pairs (children aged 0–6 years), interviewed with a structured bilingual schedule. Dietary diversity was scored across eight food groups, five or more counting as adequate; most children were preschool-aged, so this is a general measure, not the age-restricted indicator. The primary model regressed continuous dietary diversity on five pre-specified covariates, repeated as logistic regression at the adequacy cut-point. Child growth was not measured. Most caregivers had low knowledge (55.9%) but favourable attitudes (68.2%), and only 20.2% of children reached adequate dietary diversity. More favourable attitudes were independently associated with diversity (0.29 more food groups per standard deviation, 95% confidence interval 0.06 to 0.51; adjusted odds ratio 1.54), whereas knowledge was not, before or after scale refinement; the ten-item knowledge test had low internal consistency (Kuder–Richardson 20 coefficient 0.43), limiting that null result. Tribal community was the strongest correlate (Yerava versus Jenu Kuruba: adjusted odds ratio 4.91, 95% confidence interval 2.12 to 11.38). A higher structural-barrier burden accompanied lower knowledge and attitude scores. Counselling on its own is unlikely to change what these children eat without parallel action on food access and household income.