Human Lactation, Infant Feeding, and Growth: Secular Trends

This chapter discusses food intakes, principally of dietary energy, in infants fed in various ways: exclusively from the breast, with breast milk plus supplementary or complementary foods, and by artificial feeding. Changing attitudes toward infant feeding are emphasized, and it is shown that as in many other age groups in industrialized countries, the amounts of food consumed during infancy and the early preschool period are probably lower now than in the past, a fact that is influencing growth.