Complementary feeding pattern and its effect on nutritional status among infants

Abstract

A balanced and adequate diet is the key point to ensure healthy development of children's brains, physical health, and immunity in early life. Infant nutritional status is affected by many factors, among which complementary feeding is the most important. In this paper, we reviewed the definition and assessment method of complementary feeding patterns, the prevalence of Chinese complementary feeding patterns and existing problems, the research progress of the relationship between patterns of complementary feeding and nutritional status and the limitation and future study of complementary feeding. Previous studies showed that the malnutrition status and qualified complementary feeding patterns of infants and young children in poor areas need improvement. And there is almost no research focus on introducing different types of a specific food, the number of food types and the amount of feeding. There is still a lack of research on the patterns of complementary feeding and its effect on the nutritional status of infants. Few studies focus on the causes of the complementary feeding patterns, such as the patterns of complementary feeding and its associated factors for breastfed and non-breastfed infants, the relationship between the characteristics of complementary foods and nutritional status of infants, and the overall analysis of risk factors of complementary foods.

Keywords

• infants
• complementary feeding patterns
• nutritional status
• malnutrition
• poor rural areas