None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Researchers, health professionals, and policy makers know surprisingly little about how and what infants are fed during their remarkable journey from consuming a 100% milk diet at birth, to consuming the same foods as their family around their first birthday. In fact, we don’t know what babies are eating in New Zealand even though there has been a revolution in infant feeding with domination of the market by baby food ‘pouches’, and massive uptake of BLW, a virtually unstudied approach to introducing solids in which babies feed themselves only finger foods from the start of complementary feeding. The First Foods New Zealand study will determine the impact of pouches and BLW on iron deficiency, growth, choking, oral motor skills and dental health in an observational study of 625 Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland infants. The study will also investigate culturally important foods for Maori and Pacific Island people, as well as other ethnicities; investigate parent attitudes surrounding environmental sustainability aspects of infant feeding; and investigate the cost of infant feeding for baby food pouch users. The results will enable the Ministry of Health, health professionals, and Plunket to advise New Zealand parents on how to introduce solids safely.
Interventions
From the baseline visit (between 7.0 and 9.9 months of age) to approximately 2 weeks after the baseline visit, we will collect data on infant feeding (including retrospective information about complementary feeding practices), choking, oral motor skills, use of culturally important foods, and parents’ attitudes around environmental sustainability aspects of infant feeding (questionnaire); dietary intake (two 24-hour recalls with photographic prompts); body mass index (length and weight); eating
From the baseline visit (between 7.0 and 9.9 months of age) to approximately 2 weeks after the baseline visit, we will collect data on infant feeding (including retrospective information about complementary feeding practices), choking, oral motor skills, use of culturally important foods, and parents’ attitudes around environmental sustainability aspects of infant feeding (questionnaire); dietary intake (two 24-hour recalls with photographic prompts); body mass index (length and weight); eating behaviours (questionnaire and video recording), iron status (blood test), and dental health (photographs of infant’s teeth). For a subsample of breastfeeding mother-infant dyads, we will also obtain accurate data on the amount of breast milk infants consume using the stable isotope (deuterium oxide) ‘dose-to-mother’ technique. We will also analyse the nutrient content of the mother's breast milk using an expressed breast milk sample.
Sponsors
Associate Professor Anne-Louise Heath
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
7 Months to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Parents or guardians are 16 years of age or older, and * Live in Auckland, Wellington or Dunedin (New Zealand), and * Infant is 7.0 to 9.9 months of age
Exclusion criteria
* Parent or guardian is not able to communicate in English * Infant has participated in a nutrition intervention study in which parents were asked to change the way in which the infant was fed
Outcome results
None listed