BackgroundA higher vegetable intake plays an important role in promoting general health and well-being, but there is a dearth of data on the independent effect of vegetable intake on health-related quality of life (HR-QoL). This study contributes to evidence on the independent effect of vegetable consumption on HR-QoL among women in fertile age.MethodsA cross-sectional study of a sample of rural women in fertile age (15–49 years, n = 187), randomly selected from 6 rural communities in the Tolon and Savelugu Districts, Northern Region of Ghana. Vegetable consumption in the past month was assessed with a 27-item semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire; self-reported HR-QoL with the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36); nutritional status with anthropometry; household food security with the household hunger scale (HHS) and demographic and socio-economic related covariates with a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire using face-face interviews. Generalised Linear Models were fitted to assess adjusted mean scores and their 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) by terciles of vegetable intake and vegetable variety score (VVS) for the HR-QoL, its physical health (PH) and mental health (MH) domains and the SF-36 subscales.ResultsThe mean vegetable intake of the women was 324.6 ± 196.1 g/day. The mean scores of the HR-QoL, PH and MH were 69.5 ± 13.6, 72.6 ± 17.4 and 66.4 ± 12.6 respectively. The alpha Cronbach measure of reliability for the HR-QoL, PH and MH were 0.78, 0.75 and 0.62 respectively. After adjusting for potential confounders such as age, body-mass-index (BMI), parity, educational status, occupation, marital status, HHS and household asset index, we observed an increasing trend across terciles of vegetable intake in the past month for the HR-QoL (P-trend = 0.0003), PH (P-trend = 0.02), MH (P-trend = 0.001) as well as the physical functioning (P-trend = 0.01), role-physical (P-trend <.0001), and role emotional (P-trend <.0001) domains of the SF-36. The multivariate model of the results also showed a significant increasing trend in the adjusted mean scores of the HR-QoL (P-trend = 0.04), MH (P-trend = 0.001) as well as 4 subscales of the SF-36 [role-physical (P-trend = 0.02), role-emotional (P-trend = 0.05), emotional well-being (P-trend = 0.002) and vitality (P-trend <.0001)] across terciles of the VVS.ConclusionThe results of the present study suggest a potential beneficial role of high vegetable intake and consumption of more varied vegetables on HR-QoL. Further research is needed to determine the mechanisms driving these influences.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-018-5845-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The study was conducted in Northern Ghana comprising of the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions. The objective of the study was to analyse maize-based rain-fed vegetable production systems with a view to explore their potential to contribute to food and income security for rural households. A combination of qualitative and quantitative data collection methods were employed during the study. Questionnaires were employed to collect quantitative data, through semi-structured interviews on socio-cultural and economic dimensions of vegetable production including household characteristics, consumer perspectives and the economics of production and consumption of vegetables. The targeted respondents were households and consumers. Rain-fed cereal-based vegetable production is a key component of the traditional farming system in Northern Ghana and served as the main source of vegetables for rural households. The results showed that all households in the study area integrated vegetables with maize mainly for home consumption. Only a few households cultivated vegetables with the sole purpose of income.