Mother’s nutritional status and food insecurity implications over the stunting prevalence in Mexican children (805.4)

Abstract

Objective: To assess the association between the nutritional status of the mothers and the presence of food insecurity at home level with stunting prevalence in children under five years old in Mexico.Methods: Data comes from the National Nutrition Survey 2012 in Mexico. We obtained information from 5154 binomials mother/children (< 5y old). We used the Latin American and Caribbean household food Security measurement scale (ELCSA). Stunting (height for age) in children was determined by the z‐score for indicator using by the WHO Growth Reference, and for obesity and overweight in women we used the categories proposed by the WHO: malnutrition (<18.5 kg/m2), normal (18.5 to24.9 kg/m2), overweight (25‐29.9 kg/m2) and obesity (蠅 30 kg/m2).A logistic regression model was constructed in order to study the effect of the mother’s nutritional status and the food insecurity level over the stunting prevalence in children under five years old. Ages from children and mother were included in the model as correction variables.Results: 69.9% of the women from households with food insecurity suffer overweight and obesity, from them 17.4 % of their sons suffers stunting.A significant effect was observed in the interaction of nutritional state of the mother and food insecurity level over the stunting prevalence in children under 5 years old (p = 0.066). Stunting prevalence is slightly reduced when the mother presents overweight or obesity, regarding the household food insecurity, as this condition increases the stunting also rise but is markedly reduced when overweight and obesity increases in the mothers.Conclusions: Stunting in children is mainly associated to households with greater food insecurity and low weight mothers.