Adherence to Infant Feeding Guidelines in the First Foods New Zealand Study.
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Date
2023-11-02
Open Access Location
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
MDPI (Basel, Switzerland)
Rights
(c) 2023 The Author/s
CC BY 4.0
CC BY 4.0
Abstract
Infant feeding guidelines provide evidence-based recommendations to support optimal infant health, growth, and development, and exploring adherence to guidelines is a useful way of assessing diet quality. The aim of this study was to determine adherence to the recently updated Ministry of Health "Healthy Eating Guidelines for New Zealand Babies and Toddlers (0-2 years old)". Data were obtained from First Foods New Zealand, a multicentre observational study of 625 infants aged 7.0-10.0 months. Caregivers completed two 24-h diet recalls and a demographic and feeding questionnaire. Nearly all caregivers (97.9%) initiated breastfeeding, 37.8% exclusively breastfed to around six months of age, and 66.2% were currently breastfeeding (mean age 8.4 months). Most caregivers met recommendations for solid food introduction, including appropriate age (75.4%), iron-rich foods (88.3%), puréed textures (80.3%), and spoon-feeding (74.1%). Infants consumed vegetables (63.2%) and fruit (53.9%) more frequently than grain foods (49.5%), milk and milk products (38.6%), and meat and protein-rich foods (31.8%). Most caregivers avoided inappropriate beverages (93.9%) and adding salt (76.5%) and sugar (90.6%). Our findings indicated that while most infants met the recommendations for the introduction of appropriate solid foods, the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding could be improved, indicating that New Zealand families may need more support.
Description
Keywords
adherence, beverages, breastfeeding, complementary feeding, feeding guidelines, food group, infant, salt, sugar, Female, Humans, Infant, Breast Feeding, Diet, Infant Food, Infant Nutritional Physiological Phenomena, New Zealand, Multicenter Studies as Topic, Observational Studies as Topic
Citation
Brown KJ, Beck KL, von Hurst P, Heath A-L, Taylor R, Haszard J, Daniels L, Te Morenga L, McArthur J, Paul R, Jones E, Katiforis I, Rowan M, Casale M, McLean N, Cox A, Fleming E, Bruckner B, Jupiterwala R, Wei A, Conlon C. (2023). Adherence to Infant Feeding Guidelines in the First Foods New Zealand Study.. Nutrients. 15. 21. (pp. 4650-).