Evaluation of eating habits in children 0-2 years of age: a multicenter study

Abstract

Introduction: The WorldHealth Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) proposesthat complementary food must be given starting from the 6th month andbreastfeeding must continue until the age of 2. The objective of our study wasto assess dietary habits in children aged between 0 and 2 years and to assessthe knowledge level about nutrition in their mothers.Methods: 250mothers who have children between the age of 0 and 2 were included in thisdescriptive study. Questionnaires which evaluate sociodemographic factors,breastfeeding, complementary nutrition and the knowledge level of mothers aboutthese issues were given to the participants. Then length and weightmeasurements of infants were done. The data obtained from this study wereanalyzed using SPSS 16.0 statistical software. Descriptive analysis andchi-square test was used for statistical analysis. Statistical significancelevel was accepted as p lt;0.05.Results: 84.3% ofbabies were breastfed within the first hour. While 41.3% of them were breastfedbetween 3 and 6 months, breastfeeding was stopped in 16.5% of babies before6th months. 50.8% of infants were fed with Formula and 49.2% of infantswere fed with baby bottle. Supplementary food was started in the first sixmonths to the 25.6% of babies and to 51.2% of them supplementary food wasstarted after 6 months. Difference was found between training of mother and theknowledge about breastfeeding, knowledge about supplementary food, time forbreastfeeding stop and infant weightpercentile.Conclusion: Society’sknowledge level should increase and together with the increasing knowledgelevel of mothers on breast milk and complementary nutrition, a behaviororiented change would be observed.

Keywords

• nutrition
• milk human
• breast feeding
• beslenme
• anne sütü
• emzirme