ASS'ESSMENT OF' TRADITIONAL WEANING f'OODS INMENOUflA GOVfERNORATE

Abstract

Nutrition remains a cornerstone in the well being of infants for the first years. The greatest growth and development during a life time takes place during the first year. A well-nourished infant will show steady gain in weight and height

Infants require more kcalories ,protein, minerals and vitamins in proportion to weight than adults. Mother's breast milk usually gives a child all the food he needs until he is about four to six months old. Infants are slowly weaned from it into the regular foods used by family.

The design of work aimed to assess the traditional weaning food in Menoufia Governorate by helding a comparative study between mothers in rural and urban areas to measure level of maternal knowledge through weaning period of their infants and maternal nutritional behavior regarding ill infant through a questionnaire 1 including biosocial, health and nutritional data A random sample of 200 infants aged4 to 24months were chosen. The

distribution of sample in regard to residence was 135 cases from rural areas and

65 from urban areas.

The results arrived at in this study revealed the following :

1- As for biosocial characters, data indicated that most infants were in age group 12-18 months, boys, singular and with family size from 3-5 members in both rural and urban areas.

•2- significant difference (p=0.02)was found for data related to family 1ncome.

3- As for environmental description of studied children, ouse, very highly significant differences were found, regarding to water supply, (p=0.0004) and sewage disposal,(p=O.OOOO).

4-As regards the maternal characters, the results indicated that the majority of mothers in both rural and urban areas were,20-30 years old, married in age 20-25 years, had mid education level (diploma), housewives and finally breast feeding. • 5 -In concern to paternal characters, significant difference ( p = 0.04) was found in occupation, while no significant difference was recorded for age and education level.