I
Indian dietseeAsian diet
Infant nutrition
Definition
Children between the ages of birth and one year
are considered infants. Infants grow very rapidly and
have special nutritional requirements that are different
from other age groups.
Purpose
Infant nutrition is designed to meet the special
needs of very young children and give them a healthy
start in life. Children under one year old do not have
fully mature organ systems. They need nutrition that is
easy to digest and contains enough calories,vitamins,
minerals, and other nutrients to grow and develop
normally. Infants also need the proper amount of
fluids for their immature kidney’s to process. In addi-
tion, infant nutrition involves avoiding exposing
infants to substances that are harmful to their growth
and development.
Description
Infancy is a time of incredibly rapid growth and
development. Getting the right kinds of nutrients in the
right quantities and avoiding the wrong kinds of sub-
stances gives infants the best chance at a healthy start to
life. Parents are responsible for seeing that their infant’s
nutritional needs are met. Infant nutrition is so impor-
tant that the United States Department of Agriculture
has developed the WIC program. This program pro-
vides free health and social service referrals, nutrition
counseling, and vouchers for healthy foods to supple-
ment the diet of pregnant andbreastfeedingwomen,
infants, and children up to age 5 who are low-income
and nutritionally at risk. In 2004, WIC serve about 7.9
million people, including 2 million infants and 1.9 mil-
lion pregnant and nursing women.Breastfeeding
Human milk is uniquely suited to the nutrition
needs of newborns. Many health organizations,
including the American Academy of Pediatrics
(AAP), the American Medical Association (AMA),
the American Dietetic Association (ADA), and the
World Health Organization (WHO) support the posi-
tion that breast milk is the best and most complete
form of nutrition for infants. The AAP recommends
that infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first
6 months of life and that breastfeeding should con-
tinue for at least 12 months.
Breastfeeding in the United States slowly
increased in acceptance in the last decade of the twen-
tieth century. In 1998, 64% of American mothers
breastfed their babies for a short time after birth.
Only 29% were still breastfeeding by the time their
baby was 6 months old. The United States Depart-
ment of Health and Human Services developed a set of
health goals for the nation to aim for by the year 2000.
One of these goals involved breastfeeding. The
Healthy People 2000 goal was for 75% of American
women to breastfeed their babies for a period imme-
diately after birth and 50% to breastfeed for the first
6 months of their infant’s life. Although there is sig-
nificant variation in support for breastfeeding among
different racial and ethnic groups in the United States,
no racial group met this target. In 2000, the Depart-
ment of Health and Human Services estimated that:
45% of African American mothers breastfed their
infants for a short time after birth; &19% were
breastfeeding at 6 months; 9% at 12 months.
66% of Hispanic mothers breastfed their infants for
a short time after birth; 28% were breastfeeding at
6 months; 19% at 12 months.