+4.3 ptsImproving
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NutritionMulti-yearNational Family Health Survey
Percentage of children aged 6–23 months receiving an adequate diet (NFHS's minimum acceptable diet): breastfed children with at least 4 food groups and the minimum meal frequency; non-breastfed children with the three IYCF practices.
+4.3% (+39%) from 11.0% in 2019–21. A move in the better direction.
Provisional figure
| Period | India | Status | Where in the document |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023–24 | 15.3% | Provisional | NFHS-6 State/UT fact sheets, PDF p.27, "India - Key Indicators", indicator 68 "Total children age 6-23 months receiving an adequate diet (%)", column NFHS-6 (2023-24) Total |
| 2019–21 | 11.0% | Reported | NFHS-6 State/UT fact sheets, PDF p.27, "India - Key Indicators", indicator 68 "Total children age 6-23 months receiving an adequate diet (%)", column NFHS-5 (2019-21) Total; the publisher's restatement of NFHS-5 printed on the NFHS-6 sheet |
Percentage of children aged 6–23 months receiving an adequate diet (NFHS's minimum acceptable diet): breastfed children with at least 4 food groups and the minimum meal frequency; non-breastfed children with the three IYCF practices.
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is a household sample survey run by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. NFHS-6 interviewed 679,238 households, 716,397 women and 100,977 men in two fieldwork phases (28 May 2023 – 26 Feb 2024 and 7 Feb 2024 – 31 Dec 2024), using a two-stage sample designed for national, State/UT and district estimates, with height, weight, blood pressure and random blood glucose measured by trained health investigators. Every value is a weighted survey estimate, a percentage of the stated population group, not a count of services. NFHS-6 indicator 68, 'Total children age 6-23 months receiving an adequate diet (%)'. The fact sheet defines it as: 'Breastfed children receiving 4 or more food groups and a minimum meal frequency, non-breastfed children fed with a minimum of 3 Infant and Young Child Feeding Practices (fed with other milk or milk products at least twice a day, a minimum meal frequency …, and solid or semi-solid foods from at least four food groups not including the milk or milk products food group).' Based on the youngest child living with the mother and the previous day's feeding. Source: NFHS-6 fact sheet compendium, '<Place> - Key Indicators', indicator 68: the 'NFHS-6 (2023-24) Total' column for the 2023-2024 value and the 'NFHS-5 (2019-21) Total' column for the 2019-2021 value. The NFHS-5 figure is the publisher's own restatement printed on the NFHS-6 sheet (the original NFHS-5 State fact sheets are now behind a login on nfhsiips.in), and is cited as such. IHO stores totals only; the urban and rural NFHS-6 columns are not stored. Periods are stored as the national fieldwork windows: 2023-2024 (1 May 2023 – 31 Dec 2024) and 2019-2021 (17 Jun 2019 – 30 Apr 2021). Each State/UT was surveyed over a shorter stretch inside the NFHS-6 window (Appendix 2 of the compendium gives the dates; Kerala, for example, 4 Jul – 23 Dec 2023).
A survey estimate carries sampling error: IIPS publishes relative standard errors for India only (Appendix 1), so small differences between States, or between rounds for a small State or UT, may not be real. The NFHS-6 fact sheets are provisional ('The results presented in the NFHS-6 Fact Sheets are provisional'); IIPS's final reports may revise them, and IHO records any change as a revision. Values the fact sheet prints in brackets rest on 25–49 unweighted cases and are stored as low-sample (shown with a warning, never scored); values it suppresses with '*' (fewer than 25 cases) are not stored. Manipur was not surveyed in NFHS-6, so it has no 2023-2024 value, and IHO does not carry its NFHS-5 value forward.
No value in this series has been revised since the observatory first archived it.
India Health Observatory (2026). Children aged 6–23 months with an adequate diet, India, 2019–21 to 2023–24 [dataset]. Original data: International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, National Family Health Survey. https://indiahealthobservatory.com/india/minimum-acceptable-diet
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2 periods. Values exactly as published; nothing interpolated.
NFHS keeps the older minimum-acceptable-diet definition (4 or more of 7 food groups); WHO and UNICEF revised theirs in 2021 (5 of 8 food groups), so the value is not comparable with current international estimates. NFHS-6 prints its NFHS-5 value against the same indicator wording and footnotes, and the wording of this indicator did not change between the rounds. One design change affects every indicator: NFHS-6 selected urban first-stage units from the Urban Frame Survey blocks (2012-17) instead of Census enumeration blocks. Geography is the post-2020 map in both rounds (Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh separate; Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu merged). Not comparable with HMIS figures for similarly named services, which count facility reports rather than surveying households.
How signals are computed from this series: methodology.