Background/Purpose The purpose of the investigation was to determine the impact of 3 infant feeding choices (0-6 months of age) on childhood obesity/overweight levels based on BMI percentile rankings and categories of 45 children at ages 2, 3, & 4 years. The dependent variable was the BMI category (obesity, overweight, normal weight and under- weight rankings) recorded for each child based on height and weight scores for BMI. The independent variables were: one of 3 feeding choices at ages 0-6 months (exclusive breastfeeding, exclusive formula-feeding, and mixed feeding) recorded for each child.
Method Height (inches)and weight(pounds) scores were measured and previously recorded by medical personnel with Detecto 439 Mechanical Eye-Level Dual Reading Scal” with a height rod. Ages 2, 3 & 4 for each child were determined by birthdates recorded by the pediatrician's office and self-report scores of children from parent volunteers. BMI scores of participants were calculated and categorized according to the CDC formula (2011).
Analysis/Results A Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine the relationship between the 3 infant feeding choices and the BMI percentile and categories at ages 2, 3, and 4 years at the .05 level of significance. A statistically insignificant difference (p>.05) was found between the 3 feeding choices and the 3 different ages (p=.709 at 2 years; p=.339 at 3 years, p=.775 at 4 years).
Conclusions More research is needed since descriptive statistics indicated that formula-fed infants had >BMI% in the overweight/obese category (2.2-8.95%; n=4) than mixed-fed (2.2-6.7%; n=3),and breastfed infants (0-2.2%; n=1).
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