UNB: Milk consumption has a large impact on linear growth in the crucial first 1,000 days of an infant’s life, potentially reducing stunting by as much as 10.4 point among children in Bangladesh,
according to a new study done by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
“Increasing access to dairy products can be extremely beneficial to the nutrition and long-term health of children 6-23 months of age when incorporated into a diet that includes good breastfeeding practices,” says Derek Headey, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI, and lead author of the study.
“Given almost half of children in rural Bangladesh are stunted, increasing dairy consumption among children and women of childbearing age should be a central priority for nutritional strategies in Bangladesh.”
An IFPRI press release said on Sunday that Bangladesh has low levels of per capita milk consumption – less than half those of neighboring India – due to several factors like severe land constraints and historical unavailability of milk.
Stunting, or short height for age, is important public health indicator. Over a third of Bangladesh’s under-five years’ old children are stunted.
Milk production and consumption have long been strongly linked to child growth in European and African populations, but little research has focused on Asian nations.
Published recently in the journal, Economics and Human Biology, this new study – ‘Household dairy production and child growth: Evidence from Bangladesh,’ authored by IFPRI’s Derek Headey and University of London’s Samira Choudhury, examines the impact of dairy consumption and production on child nutritional outcomes while comparing the influence on breastfeeding.
The study utilizes the nationally representative Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS) of rural areas over two rounds 2011/12 and 2015.
“This finding is especially important as growth faltering appears to be particularly pronounced from roughly 6 months of age to 20 months of age, a period that coincides with the introduction of complementary foods, such as rice, that are often low in protein and micronutrients that aid growth and development,” says Headey.