Infant feeding practices and its impact on the prevalence of protein energy malnutrition infant feeding practices and its impact on the prevalence of protein energy malnutrition

Abstract

Protein-Energy-Malnulrition is an important Public Hea Ith Problem among infants and young children. Though poverty is known to be the major fac­tor but faulty feeding habits arising out of ignorance often lead to inadequate intake of essential nutrients by the infant. In order to find out the actual prevailing feeding practices and its impact on the nutritional status of infants this study conducted in one urban andtivo rural units of Varanasi district by adopting appropriate sampling procedure. In a II mothers of360 infants (120 in each study un it) were interviewed regarding breastfeeding practices, dilution and nature of top milk, age of introducing supplementaryfeeding etc. It was observed that the o verall prevalence of PEM was sig­nificantly higher in bottle fed group (72.73%) than spoonfed group (40.11%). Similarly the prevalence of PEM was 67.86% in late weaned group as compared to 48.38% in optimum weaned group.