Evaluation of BMI of Infants 6-12 Months of Age Having Different Feeding Practices

Abstract

Nutrition has always been an integral part of a child’s overall development. Optimal nutrition of the child during the first 2 years of life decreases the morbidity and mortality as well as reduces the risk of chronic disease and harbors better overall development. Children between ages 6-8 months receiving solid or semi-solid food along with breast milk are 50.1% in urban areas and 39.9% in rural areas⁽⁴⁾.  To improve the breastfeeding and complementary feeding indicators, the guidelines of Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) need to be uniformly practiced. The poor status of nutrition among the children predisposes them not only to a number of infections but also decrease their intellectual capacity thus having a detrimental effect not only on the health of the child but also on the overall progress of our country. Keeping these statistics in mind we aim to determine how the different feeding practices among mothers affect the BMI of the infants. We enrolled 210 infants and their mothers/caregivers were given a questionnaire asking the sociodemographic details and the type of food they give to their children along with breastfeeding. It was observed that the majority of the infants were given complementary feed (82.86%). The mean age of introduction of complementary feed was 6.84±1.668months. The majority of the cases were having normal BMI (65.71%), 29% were underweight and 3% were overweight. Early introduction of complementary feed was observed among overweight and obese infants. Home based complementary food was most commonly given to the infants (55.7%), in which cereals were the most common food group included (81.9%).