S Pourali , A Ghadimi , N Khorshodian, M Avazpour, J Malekzadeh ,
Volume 26, Issue 5 (11-2021)
Abstract
Background & aim: Children under the age of two are the most vulnerable group of children who are at risk for developmental disorders due to rapid growth and inadequate food intake. Therapeutic measures to solve the nutritional problems of children, especially infants, are often without significant effect and indicate the need for further studies. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine and compare the complementary feeding pattern of children aged 6-24 months with growth and health disorders in Boyer-Ahmad city.
Methods: In the present analytical case-control study conducted in 2018, 68 underweight children referred to Boyer-Ahmad pediatric and nutrition clinics, or selected from the list of malnourished children in health centers were compared to 61 healthy control children in terms of nutritional patterns and socio-economic status. The variables of parents' education, parents' occupation, mothers' knowledge, attitude and practices toward child nutrition and their 24-hour food intake were evaluated. The data were analyzed using Chi-square, independent samples t-test and Man-Whitney tests.
Results: There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups of children in terms of energy, protein, fat, iron, zinc and vitamin A intake, but the amount of carbohydrate intake in children with FTT showed a statistically significant difference with healthy control children (p = 0.003). The most important factors related to FTT in children were the nutritional knowledge of the mothers (p = .001), mother's education (p = .02), father's education (p = 0.033), frequency of complementary food consumption (p = .017) and time Consumption of snacks (p = .017) by children. The variables of parental employment status, age of starting complementary feeding, type of milk consumed were not statistically different between the children with FTT and controls.
Conclusion: Nutritional information of mothers, frequency of complementary feeding, and food preparation hygiene, time of feeding snacks and education level of parents had the most relationship with growth of children.
