Complementary feeding practices: Current global and regional estimates

Abstract

Insufficient quantities and inadequate quality of complementary foods, together with poor feeding practices, pose a threat to children's health and nutrition. Interventions to improve complementary feeding are critical to reduce all forms of malnutrition, and access to data to ascertain the status of complementary feeding practices is essential for efforts to improve feeding behaviours. However, sufficient data to generate estimates for the core indicators covering the complementary feeding period only became available recently. The current situation of complementary feeding at the global and regional level is reported here using data contained within the UNICEF global database. Global rates of continued breastfeeding drop from 74.0% at 1 year of age to 46.3% at 2 years of age. Nearly a third of infants 4-5 months old are already fed solid foods, whereas nearly 20% of 10-11 months old had not consumed solid foods during the day prior to their survey. Of particular concern is the low rate (28.2%) of children 6-23 months receiving at least a minimally diverse diet. Although rates for all indicators vary by background characteristics, feeding behaviours are suboptimal even in richest households, suggesting that cultural factors and poor knowledge regarding an adequate diet for young children are important to address. In summary, far too few children are benefitting from minimum complementary feeding practices. Efforts are needed not only to improve children's diets for their survival, growth, and development but also for governments to report on progress against global infant and young child feeding indicators on a regular basis.

The state of child nutrition in Ethiopia: an umbrella review of systematic review and meta-analysis reports

“…Only a few children were fed with an optimal diet, appropriate in both diversity and frequency. To reduce the global burden of malnutrition, WHO has outlined essential IYCF recommendations [12,13,33]. The IYCF recommendations are designed specifically for children under 24 months of age and provide universal guidance for optimal breast and complementary feeding practices.…”

“…The IYCF recommendations are designed specifically for children under 24 months of age and provide universal guidance for optimal breast and complementary feeding practices. The optimal breastfeeding recommendations include starting breastfeeding within the first one hour after birth, exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of age , and continued breastfeeding up to two years and beyond [12,13,33]. Breastmilk alone could not satisfy the nutrient demand of a child after six months of age [13].…”

“…The optimal breastfeeding recommendations include starting breastfeeding within the first one hour after birth, exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of age , and continued breastfeeding up to two years and beyond [12,13,33]. Breastmilk alone could not satisfy the nutrient demand of a child after six months of age [13]. Thus, the child needs to get appropriate complementary food, starting from six months of age.…”

“…Early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months, continued breastfeeding, timely initiation of complementary food of optimal diversity and frequency, and micronutrients supplementation have taken centrality of the IYCF recommendations. Suboptimal IYCF practices are often associated with poor nutritional outcomes [13,14]. The other non-dietary, but proximal, factors often linked to malnutrition are unhygienic environment and repeated infection, coupled with poor health care utilization [8-10, 12, 15].…”

Dissimilarities across age groups in the associations between complementary feeding practices and child growth: Evidence from rural Togo

“…The complementary feeding (CF) period, between 6 and 23 months of age, is of paramount importance for linear growth (Prendergast & Humphrey, 2014;Stewart, Iannotti, Dewey, Michaelsen, & Onyango, 2013;White, Bégin, Kumapley, Murray, & Krasevec, 2017). In lowand middle-income countries, most of the decline in height-for-age occurs during the~500-day transition time when breastmilk is complemented by family food (Aguayo & Menon, 2016;Bégin & Aguayo, 2017).…”