Study protocol
Complementary feeding: a Global Network cluster randomized controlled trial
-
* Corresponding author: Nancy F Krebs nancy.krebs@ucdenver.edu
BMC Pediatrics 2011, 11:4 doi:10.1186/1471-2431-11-4
dominant effect of protein
Peter Woolf (2011-03-17 09:16) Foodwiki LLC
I'm curious about the protein composition of the two diets. As you show in Table 1, the beef diet adds 13 or 19.5 g of protein for the 6-12 and 13-18 month range, while the cereal diet adds only 3.07 or 4.60 for each group.
RDA values for protein for infants up to 12 months are 13-14 g/day while for 1-3 years old is 16 g/day. In this case, the beef is providing 100% or more of the infant's RDA of protein, while the cereal is providing only ~20%.
The role of dietary protein on linear growth is well established when protein is limiting--which is likely to be the case here.
It would be interesting if in the study you also measured/estimated the protein intake per infant in both groups in each location. This would help to tease out the role of total protein from the meat/cereal comparison.
Competing interests
none
top