Infant feeding practices and dietary consumption of US infants and toddlers: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003-2012

Objective: To compare infant and toddler anthropometric measurements, feeding practices and mean nutrient intakes by race/ethnicity and income. Design: Cross-sectional analysis using general linear modelling. Ten years of survey data (2003-2012) were combined to compare anthropometric measurements, feeding practices and mean nutrient intakes from a nationally representative US sample. Setting: The 2003-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Subjects: Infants and toddlers (n 3669) aged 0-24 months. Results: Rates of overweight were higher among Mexican-American infants and toddlers (P= 0.002). There were also several differences in feeding practices among groups based on race/ethnicity. Cessation of breast-feeding occurred earlier for non-Hispanic black and Mexican-American v. non-Hispanic white infants (3.6 and 4.2 v. 5.3 months: P < 0.0001; P= 0.001). Age at first feeding of solids was earlier for white than Mexican-American infants (5.3 v. 5.7 months; P=0.02). There were differences in almost all feeding practices based on income, including the lowest-income infants stopped breast-feeding earlier than the highest-income infants (3.2 v. 5.8 months, P < 0.0001). Several differences in mean nutrient intakes by both race/ethnicity and income were also identified. Conclusions: Our study indicates that disparities in overweight, feeding practices and mean nutrient intakes exist among infants and toddlers according to race/ ethnicity, which cannot be disentangled from income.