Maternal and Child Nutrition

Premixed flours for infant porridge are increasingly produced and sold in developing countries to complement continued breastfeeding. Such complementary food (CF) products have known efficacy against malnutrition in children from 6 to 24 months of age, but ingredient ratios and production processes may vary. This study provides the first systematic measurement of their actual nutrient composition. We purchased samples of 108 premixed CF products in 22 low- and middle-income countries, and commissioned blind laboratory measurement of each product's macronutrients and micronutrients.

Despite substantial reductions in recent years in Nepal, stunting prevalence in children younger than 5 years remains high and represents a leading public health concern. To identify factors contributing to the stunting burden, we report multilevel risk factors associated with stunting in 4,853 children aged 6–59 months in a nationally and agroecologically representative random sample from the first year of the Policy and Science for Health, Agriculture, and Nutrition Community Studies, a community‐based observational, mixed‐panel study.

The World Health Organization's infant and young child feeding (IYCF) indicators were developed to fill multiple needs: to facilitate the assessment and comparison of IYCF practices across settings, to identify populations at risk and to evaluate the impact of interventions and measure progress towards achieving targets (World Health Organization 2008). Understanding the relationships between these indicators and child anthropometric outcomes, as described in a recently published paper in Maternal & Child Nutrition (Jones et al.