Evaluation of the impact of weaning food messages on infant feeding practices and child growth in rural Bangladesh

Abstract

In rural Bangladesh, a community-based weaning intervention used volunteers to teach complementary feeding to families of 62 breast-fed infants aged 6-12 mo. Over 5 mo, treatment children gained on average 0.46 SD (approximately 460 g) more in weight-for-age (WAZ) than the 55 control subjects, and were approximately 0.5 kg heavier at the final measure. The differences were statistically significant (P < 0.001). The percent median weight-for-age (WAPM) of treatment children held steady at 76% of the National Center for Health Statistics' reference, whereas the WAPM of control subjects dropped from 78% to 72%. The increase in percentage points of severe malnutrition (below -3 WAZ) was only 5% in the treatment group compared with 26% in the control subjects. Treatment children consumed a significantly greater percent of their energy and protein requirements from complementary foods than did control subjects. The affordable complementary foods consisted mainly of cereal porridge with oil and brown sugar. These findings suggest that educational interventions teaching families to feed hygienic, simple, cheap, energy-enriched complementary foods to breast-fed infants after 5-6 mo can improve child growth, even under impoverished conditions.

Nutritional Quality of Diets fed to Young Children in Urban Slums can be Improved by Intensive Nutrition Education

“…Similar reluctance to introducing nonvegetarian foods was observed by Brown et al [14] in Bangladeshi mothers. It was observed that almost one-third of the mothers introduced nonvegetarian foods to their children's diets, with the amount ranging from one half of a piece to two or three pieces of mutton or fish.…”

Epidemiologia nutricional

“…Três intervenções, realizadas em Bangladesh (Brown et al, 1992), China (Guldan et al, 2000) e Brasil , utilizaram somente aconselhamento nutricional. Tais estudos tiveram como objetivo melhorar a alimentação complementar, sem deixar de incentivar a amamentação.…”

“…Tais estudos tiveram como objetivo melhorar a alimentação complementar, sem deixar de incentivar a amamentação. A idade das crianças ao serem arroladas nos estudos variou de 0 até 18 meses ), e o tempo de acompanhamento, de cinco (Brown et al, 1992) a 12 meses (Guldan et al, 2000.…”

“…As três intervenções obtiveram impacto positivo sobre o estado nutricional das crianças, expresso em escores Z de peso para idade e duas também em escores Z de comprimento para idade (Guldan et al, 2000;Brown et al, 1992).…”

Nutrition interventions to reduce diarrhoea morbidity and mortality

“…Active encouragement and supervision at meal-times were also advocated. Of the promoted behaviours, the most frequently implemented were those requiring little time and money (Brown et al 1992). During a 5-month period, intervened infants gained significantly more weight than control infants (0.46 SD weight-for-age, P < 0.001).…”