Evidence for micronutrients other than iron or anaemia was extremely limited.

Some recommendations for future research are highlighted in the paper.

#nutrition #childdevelopment #ECD #nurturingcare

There was very limited evidence from intervention studies and findings were inconsistent but suggest that nutritional interventions targeting undernourished caregivers could potentially have a positive impact on caregiving behaviours.

Suboptimal caregiver dietary intakes/quality, food insecurity, caregiver under- and overnutrition, anaemia and poor vitamin B6 status were quite consistently associated with less responsive caregiving and less engagement in early learning opportunities in observational studies.

This presents valuable opportunities to integrate maternal psychosocial wellbeing (including mental health & safety & security) and nurturing care (stimulation & responsive caregiving) into existing IYCF programmes that could benefit children’s dietary intakes, growth and development.

Mothers in 🇲🇼 who reported more depressive symptoms at 1 year postpartum were less likely to continue breastfeeding at around 1 year.

Social support was not associated with child feeding practices in either setting.

Mothers in 🇿🇦 who reported more psychosocial stimulation in the home (i.e. more books, toys, caregiver play activities with children) fed their children more diverse diets.

🔗 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Mothers in 🇿🇦 exposed to intimate partner violence in the past 12 months (i.e. the child’s lifetime) were less likely to feed their children the minimum dietary diversity and the minimum acceptable diet.

Nutrition education was the most common intervention. Social protection, agricultural, environment restructuring and multicomponent interventions were limited.

The second paper in this supplement (forthcoming!) will evaluate the effectiveness of these interventions on F&V intakes. Stay tuned!

Only about one quarter of the interventions conducted follow-up assessments to determine if the impacts on F&V intake were sustained after the intervention ended. Future research should incorporate follow-up evaluations to better understand the long-term effects and sustainability on F&V intakes.

Most of the research targeted adults, school-age children and children <5 yrs. More research is needed among underrepresented population groups, particularly adolescents, pregnant and lactating women and older adults.

Most interventions were implemented in high-income countries. Data were especially limited from Southeast Asia, South America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. More research from LMICs and underrepresented regions could provide insights into how best to improve diets of people living in LMICs.