I wrote this for the “Speakers’ Corner” page of the UN Standing Committee of Nutrition newsletter. It’s a “pet theory” of mine. Some of the major data I cite comes from the figure above, which averages fingdings from national surveys from 39 developing countries. The article by Lutter that I refer to is in an earlier issue at THIS PAGE.

Here’s the basic idea:

1. Babies tend to have normal length at birth all over the world. In all developing countries average growth in length does not keep up with the standard, starting from birth, as the figure above illustrates. (All three lines would go straight across at zero for average normal growth.)

2. It’s rare anywhere for babies to be optimally breast-fed, that is, exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months with addition of small and then gradually increasing amounts of other foods in the following months so as to maintain the quantity of breastmilk.

3. Instead, other foods displace breast milk. In rich countries, these foods replace the key nutrients the body needs for height growth (whereas weight growth mainly needs just calories), whereas in poor countries they do not. Poor babies can’t put on much height, but the added foods often have enough sugar or starch that they can put on weight. So in the early months in developing countries, weight for height is actually higher than in rich countries.

4. Since weight for age (what is plotted on growth charts) is a kind of average of the other two, note how it looks normal for the first several months, leading to the common (incorrect) assumption that problems with infant growth only start at the “weaning age.”

I’d be delighted to discuss this with anyone interested. Write me at tedgreiner@yahoo.com.

Click here to open the pdf file. You can find a “cleaner” copy online at THIS PAGE on pp. 63-4.