Qualitative Study of Utilization of Local Food for the Nutritional Needs of Stunted Children in Indonesia

Stunting is a national problem in Indonesia due to an imbalance in children's nutritional intake. Diversity in balanced food consumption is one of the efforts to prevent stunting.

Exploring the potential of various types of food ingredients, utilization, equipment, capabilities, and expectations of the community in utilizing local food to fulfill stunting children's nutrition.

Qualitative studies use a phenomenological approach. Research informants 15 people. Data were collected through Focus Group Discussion activities. ATLAS.Ti22 software is used to analyze data from focus group discussions.

It was found that the theme of ability and expectation has the highest co-occurrence value of 0.76, meaning that hope is very strongly related to the ability of the community. The theme of ability and availability of food ingredients has a co-occurrence value of 0.58, meaning that the ability to process local food ingredients is strongly related to the availability of food ingredients. Utilization and ability co-occurrence value of 0.16 means that the use of local food ingredients is weakly related to the ability to process food.

Diversity in food consumption is related to food availability, utilization, and ability to process food. Suggestion: local food processing assistance is needed for the stunting target group to increase the community's ability to process local food. Inter-agency collaboration is needed in specific nutrition intervention programs by utilizing local food ingredients.