A Dietary Analysis of Haitian Infants and a Critical Analysis of Dietary Quality Using IYCF Standards

Abstract

The 2008 Lancet Series on Maternal and Child Undernutrition identifies infant feeding education with food supplementation as an effective strategy to reduce child undernutrition by improving overall nutrient intake. We assessed the impact of an intervention providing infant feeding education and a lipid‐based nutrient supplement (LNS) on the overall dietary quality of non‐breastfed HIV‐exposed uninfected infants in urban Haiti. Dietary intake data was collected in intervention (n=77) and control (n=36) infants at age 9 mo using 24‐hr recalls with caregivers. Diet quality was assessed using the WHO Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) indicators. Intervention participants were more likely to meet the minimum dietary diversity indicator compared to the control group both with (63.6% vs 33.3%, p=0.003) and without (53.9% vs 33.3%, p=0.048) including the contribution of the LNS to the diet. In addition, intervention infants were more likely to consume iron‐rich foods only when the LNS was included in the analysis (89.5% vs 69.4%, p=0.008). Though differences in the infants’ diets do exist with and without the lipid‐based supplementation, findings suggest that both of the intervention components (education and LNS) improved the infant diets. Research support was provided by the Weill Cornell Center for Global Health.