BACKGROUND Optimum nutrition and good feeding practices amongst infants and young children are the key determinants of growth for a healthy life. Dietary diversity is considered to be a reliable and easy-to-measure proxy variable to assess young children's feeding practices for dietary adequacy and nutritional intake. This research aims to examine the current practices of dietary diversity amon...

Background: The use of indices of infant and young child feeding practices to predict growth has generated inconsistent results, possibly through age and seasonal confounding. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of a dietary diversity score (DDS) and infant and child feeding index (ICFI) with growth among young children in a repeated cross-sectional and a follow-up study in tw...

BACKGROUND Early feeding practices lay the foundation for children's eating habits and weight gain. Questionnaires are available to assess parental feeding but overlapping and inconsistent items, subscales and terminology limit conceptual clarity and between study comparisons. Our aim was to consolidate a range of existing items into a parsimonious and conceptually robust questionnaire for asse...

Background: Proper feeding practices are essential for attaining and maintaining optimum nutrition, health, development of infants children. Exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months life continued two years, together with age-appropriate, nutritionally adequate complementary initiated after age, Infant Young Child Feeding (IYCF) practices. However, often many aspects infant young chi...

BACKGROUND Despite a growing consensus on the feeding practices associated with healthy eating patterns, few observational studies of maternal feeding practices with young children have been conducted, especially in low-income populations. The aim of this study was to provide such data on a low income sample to determine the degree to which observed maternal feeding practices compare with curre...

BACKGROUND The aim of the current study is to identify strategies to promote healthy eating in young children that can be applied by caregivers, based on their own perceptions of effectiveness and feasibility. Whereas previous research mainly focused on parental influences on children's eating behavior, the growing role of other caregivers in the upbringing of children can no longer be denied. ...

BACKGROUND A number of studies conducted with ethnically diverse, low-income samples have found that parents with indulgent feeding styles had children with a higher weight status. Indulgent parents are those who are responsive to their child's emotional states but have problems setting appropriate boundaries with their child. Because the processes through which styles impact child weight are p...

OBJECTIVE To explore the association between maternal disability as measured by the presence of a limiting longstanding illness (LLI) 9 months postpartum and subsequent child health at the age of 7 years. DESIGN Nationally representative prospective longitudinal study. SETTING England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. PARTICIPANTS Secondary analysis of data on 11 807 mother-child pai...

BACKGROUND Inadequate nutrition during the first two years of life may lead to childhood morbidity and mortality, as well as inadequate brain development. Infants are at increased risk of malnutrition by six months, when breast milk alone is no longer sufficient to meet their nutritional requirements. However the factors associated with nutritional status of infants after 6 months of age have r...