Attitudes and practices of caregivers regarding infant feeding and nutritional status of children aged 2 to 5 years. Córdoba

Abstract

Early childhood (2 to 5 years) is a stage in which a large number of transitions take place, including food transitions, which influence feeding patterns, preferences and rejections of certain foods. Taking into consideration the attitudes and practices of caregivers in relation to children's feeding is essential to understand their effects on nutritional status and, therefore, on present and future health. The aim of this research was to establish the association between caregivers' attitudes and practices related to child feeding and nutritional status in children aged 2 to 5 years attending the Health Center No. 63 of Parque República neighborhood, in the city of Córdoba, during year 2021.

The study was observational, correlational and cross-sectional. The main variables were: sociodemographic, nutritional status (anthropometry) and attitudes and practices of the caregiver regarding infant feeding.Population: non-probabilistic sample of 90 caregivers interviewed, the Children Food Questionnaire (CFQ) translated and adapted to Spanish (Navarro and Reyes, 2016) was used. Descriptive statistics and Spearman Brown's Rho statistic were used for data analysis.

The average age of caregivers was 31.7 years. 94.4% were female and 92.2% were mothers. Fifty percent of children presented normal nutritional status, 43% BMI >Pc 85 and 7% were at risk of underweight and underweight. With the total CFQ score a significant correlation was observed between attitudes and practices with children's NE  rho - 0.257. It was determined that there is no relationship between pressure (rho -0.283) and control (rho -0.133) of food consumed by the child with BMI higher than expected for the age. We worked with a significance of 0.05.

The high prevalence of overweight/obesity observed in children aged 2 to 5 years reflects the need to work on NCD promotion and prevention actions with families. To understand caregivers' attitudes and practices related to child feeding is critical to figure up children's feeding styles and their effects on nutritional status.