Relationship between milk feeding pattern and preschool children weight in Sari ‎

Introduction: Obesity in childhood is not only isolated to obesity in adulthood but it also &lrm;aggravates physical complication later in life. One of the simple strategies for prevention of &lrm;pediatric obesity is breastfeeding in infancy period.&lrm; &nbsp;Objective: This study aimed to determine the relationship between milk feeding pattern and &lrm;preschool children&rsquo;s weight.&lrm; &nbsp;Methods: This study is a retrospective case-control. For data collection, a questionnaire, meter &lrm;and scale was used. In this study the case groups were obese children and the control groups &lrm;were children with normal weight. Sample size was &lrm;&rlm;120&rlm;&lrm; that were selected by cluster &lrm;randomized method. Researcher selected the sample by reporting to day care centers affiliated &lrm;to Behzisti and &lrm;&rlm;60&rlm;&lrm; obese and &lrm;&rlm;60&rlm;&lrm; normal weight children were chosen after their age, sex, &lrm;height, weight and BMI was measured. According to the definition of this study, children &lrm;with BMI more the &lrm;&rlm;85&rlm;&lrm; percentile based on age and sex were considered obese.&lrm; Results: The results indicated that there was a significant difference between milkfeeding &lrm;pattern during infancy and obese, and normal weight children (P<&lrm;&rlm;0.001&rlm;&lrm;). But there was no &lrm;significant difference between timing of introduction of solid foods. But there was a &lrm;significant difference between daily TV watching (P<&lrm;&rlm;0.001&rlm;&lrm;), mother&rsquo;s BMI (P<&lrm;&rlm;0.001&rlm;&lrm;) and &lrm;birth weight (P<&lrm;&rlm;0.003&rlm;&lrm;) in two groups.&lrm; Conclusion: This survey indicated that milkfeeding pattern differed significantly between &lrm;obese and normal weight children, also after adjusting demographic characteristics, &lrm;milkfeeding pattern was significant, thus milkfeeding pattern along with demographic &lrm;characteristics effects children&rsquo;s weight.&lrm;