Healthy Starts
Assessing the role of commercial complementary foods in children's diets in Kenya and Bangladesh
Children and caregivers everywhere deserve access to affordable, healthy, and nutritious food. While homemade foods remain central to young children’s diets, the reality is that many families are also choosing commercial complementary foods (CCF), and they have a right to products that are safe and nutritionally appropriate.
Healthy Starts is a research initiative exploring how CCF are shaping the diets of older infants and young children in Kenya and Bangladesh. While wasting, stunting, and micronutrient deficiencies remain major nutrition challenges among children under five, childhood overweight is also emerging as a concern, reflecting the growing double burden of malnutrition. These trends are occurring alongside rapid growth in the availability and consumption of commercially produced and packaged foods, including CCF.
While appropriately formulated and fortified CCF can play a positive role in young children’s diets, by providing essential nutrients in convenient forms, products high in sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats may displace more nutritious foods that children need for optimal growth and development.
Building on ATNi’s extensive research in Infant and Young Child Nutrition, assessing major manufacturers of breast-milk substitutes and CCF across markets, Healthy Starts provides a comprehensive assessment of the role of commercial complementary foods in young children’s diets, combining research on consumption, caregiver perceptions, markets and policies.