Association of feeding practices with growth in infants: a longitudinal observational study in a rural district of Pakistan

Our study indicates that infants were over four times more likely to be malnourished by 6 months if complementary feeding was initiated before 4 months of age. While causal relations/directionality cannot be established from these findings, we believe that parents may resort to suboptimal complementary feeding practices shortly after birth, due to perceived inadequate infant growth. A tailored approach addressing systemic barriers to optimal feeding practices is recommended for resource-constrained, nutrition-poor settings, such as rural Pakistan.