BACKGROUND Childhood obesity is a significant public health challenge that affects approximately one in five children worldwide. Infant feeding practices are implicated in the aetiology of childhood obesity. Infant feeding interventions for childhood obesity are increasingly popular but outcome reporting is inconsistent across trials. Lack of standardisation limits examination of intervention e...

This paper begins with a discussion of social research which seeks to critique the emphasis on breastfeeding in infant feeding health promotion. The key themes of this research center on science, risk, and morality but other factors can also shape mothers’ decisions and practices regarding infant feeding, and particularly, breastfeeding. The paper explores a range of research studies which toge...

Infant feeding by HIV-infected mothers has been a major global public health dilemma and a highly controversial matter. The controversy is reflected in the different sets of WHO infant feeding guidelines that have been issued over the last two decades. This thematic series, 'Infant feeding and HIV: lessons learnt and ways ahead' highlights the multiple challenges that HIV-infected women, infant...

Rapid early growth in infants may influence overweight and CVD in later life. Both rapid growth and these disease outcomes disproportionately affect some ethnic minorities. We determined ethnic differences in growth rate (Δ standard deviation scores, ΔSDS) during the first 6 months of life and assessed the explanatory role of infant feeding. Data were derived from a multiethnic cohort for the A...

Attitudes of 2500 urban college girls from Ludhiana city, aged 15 to 20 years were assessed towards infant feeding using a standardized Likert Scale (r = 0.82). The influence of subject opted in college and the presence of a child less than 3 years in the family on the attitudes was also studied. The overall attitudes of the whole group towards infant feeding were negative. Science students had...

The majority of infant-feeding research is focused on identifying mother's reasons for the cessation of breastfeeding. The experience of mothers who choose to use formula is largely overlooked in quantitative designs. This study aimed to describe the emotional and practical experiences of mothers who formula feed in any quantity, and examine whether these experiences would vary among different ...

OBJECTIVES To assess knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding infant feeding among HIV-positive pregnant women in Gaborone, Botswana, and factors that influence their infant feeding choices. DESIGN A cross-sectional study. METHODS AND STUDY SETTING A questionnaire survey of 96 HIV-positive pregnant women attending four public infectious disease control clinics in Gaborone, Botswana. R...