Programmes aimed at fighting hunger and malnutrition need to be based on a sound understanding of people’s nutritional status.

As part of a recommended package of food and nutrition security indicators, FAO has developed "Guidelines for measuring dietary diversity". The dietary diversity assessment tool is useful for ensuring that agricultural development, food security and nutrition education programmes effectively lead to more nutritious diets. This easy to use tool can be easily integrated into impact assessments and used for rapid evaluations.